Burden of Proof
by Ephemeral Lunatic
Summary: Two years ago, she told him that she'd get him out if he ever ended up behind bars wrongfully accused of a crime. Unfortunately for him, the crime he's being accused of right now is against her, and until she wakes up, it's his word versus all the evidence piling up against him. Now AU because I'm slow and new episodes just keep coming out faster than I write new chapters. COMPLETE
1. Chapter 1

**Burden of Proof**

* * *

_It is a fallacy, the Burden of Proof.  
_

_You cannot claim that "miracles exist because no one has proven that they do not exist." _

_You cannot claim that "he is guilty because no one has proven he is innocent."_

_But still, so many do.  
_

* * *

"I just talked to the boys. How is she?"

"Not much change. She may come out of it any time now, though. She's squeezed my hand a couple of times in the past few minutes as I've been talking to her."

"Oh, look! She just moved! Kate!"

"Katie?"

* * *

There's two thoughts running through her mind as Kate Beckett swims back to the realm of consciousness. One thought quickly masks the other as her nerves slowly begin to feel again and register her injuries.

Pain, and lots of it.

It hurts to move, so she doesn't, not really. It feels as though a bomb has gone off in her head, rattling everything around in her skull, burning and throbbing at her cheekbone, her jaw, her temple. Her lower back prickles with a sensation like tiny knives poking into her and it makes her muscles spasm against her will in discomfort. Her shoulders and neck feel stiff, her limbs feel heavy to lift and her fingers are digging into some sort of fabric, but there's a spongy resistance each time she grips and digs in deeper with her fingertips.

A bed, maybe? Not her bed; it's too narrow, the mattress too thin. A hospital bed then. That would make sense. If she's in so much pain, she must be in a hospital.

Wait, why is she in a hospital?

* * *

"The nurse is paging Dr. Collins right now."

"Good."

"Kate, are you awake, honey? Kate, open your eyes for me."

"Damn it, she's in so much pain. What the hell's taking them so long?"

* * *

Noise gradually begins to filter into her ears, the sound muffled, as though she's listening from underwater or from behind a thick barrier of glass. She vaguely registers the sounds around her as voices but she can't hear them, not on a level of which she can comprehend what's being said. She can't tell if someone is speaking to her or speaking to someone else that may be there, but the chatter continues. One voice is an octave or two higher than the other and she winces as she strains to focus in on it.

The effort is useless. She can't make sense of any of it and it's just taxing her more to try to.

Her head is throbbing, more so than it was however long before, and as she struggles to open her eyes, even just a slit. It's too bright. She can't see properly. Her vision is blurry, unfocused, and she can only make out shadows of figures before her. Two, three? One is moving around and maybe there's another one approaching now. She's not certain.

Doesn't matter though, not right now. Hardly a blip on the radar in the grand scheme of things at the moment. The only thing she's registering at this moment is pain. She's in pain, so much pain. God it hurts. Everywhere. It hurts everywhere and she just—

She opens her mouth, tries to vocalize her agony to these shadows she hopes are people, but her hearing is still shot. She can't even tell if her own voice is coming out in words, a moan of pain or a strangled sob, if even that. She's betting on a mix of the latter two because she just feels so miserably pathetic.

A voice at the back of her head chides her:_ Pull yourself together, Beckett. You were shot in the chest before. This is nothing in comparison to that._

* * *

"I'm so sorry for the wait, it's a zoo in here tonight. Has she been responsive?"

"Very little."

"...hurts."

"Oh, Kate."

"I know sweetheart, I know it hurts. We're getting you help."

"Dr. Collins is on the way, but she gave me the go ahead to give her something for the pain."

"Hear that? The doctors are giving you something for the pain so just hang on, Katie. Hang on."

* * *

She grits her teeth and something—someone?—takes hold of her hand, and that's when her initial second thought upon waking comes flying back to the forefront of her mind: _Castle_.

Right. She remembers now. She was with Castle. They'd been...arguing. Yes, there was an argument between the two of them. It was something trivial; a misunderstanding blown out of proportion. They'd been doing that a lot lately. He'd joked around recently saying that the honeymoon was over because now they were bickering over the silly quirks and personal habits that they'd discovered about one another in the past three months they've been together.

Today's fight was...shit, why can't she remember? Her head is so fuzzy. But he came over after they left work. They'd left separately and she wasn't expecting him to come over. She'd still been angry at him, didn't want to see him at all, but there he was and...oh. They worked it out, didn't they? They did. Words turned to touches, touches to kisses and then...

Yes. They worked it out. But there was another fight. That's how she got hurt. Not a fight with Castle; he'd left. Why was it he left? Where was he going?

Doesn't matter.

Someone else was in her apartment, that's what matters. Someone broke into her home; someone that she recognized. A case they were working on?

Cole...? No. Coleman. He went by the name Coleman.

Big guy, and he caught her off-guard. They struggled. He got the upper-hand on her and she was trying her hardest to fend him off when Castle came back.

Oh God, _Castle came back._

She heard him call out to her and then there was nothing. Everything went black. The rest of her memory ends there. Gone. Blank.

Oh God. Oh no. If she's hurt, what about Castle? Is Castle here? Is Castle hurt?

Where's Castle?

* * *

"Detective Beckett, my name is Dr. Collins. Can you tell me what happened tonight? Who did this to you?"

"Cas..."

"What's that sweetheart? What did you say?"

"Cas..tle...Castle..."

"Castle? Did she just say 'Castle'?"

* * *

She scrambles, clawing at the bed beneath her, still writhing because shit it hurts, but she's fighting it anyways. She has to, has to get up, has to find Castle. Her head is spinning, pain exploding everywhere but no, she doesn't care. She's felt crippling pain before. This is nothing. This won't stop her. Nothing will stop her.

The shadows start to swarm around her, then the voices escalate in tone, in frequency. There's three of them speaking, she can at least manage to distinguish that.

Good, they're paying attention then. She could care less about herself right now. She has her own questions and she has to know if he's okay. She needs Castle. Has to find Castle.

* * *

"..._Cas_.._tle_. Castle."

"Castle's not here, honey."

"It's Dad. Dad and Lanie. You have to calm down. Relax, sweetheart, just relax."

"Castle. Hurts."

"You mean to tell me that the man who brought her in did this to her? Rick Castle?"

"No, that can't be—"

"Cas..._Ri..ck_."_  
_

* * *

She heard it. She definitely heard it that time. Someone said his name. _They said his name! _

She opens her mouth again, his name and her fears on her mind and hopefully her lips but she can't tell if it's reaching them, these shadowy specters before her. She growls, frustrated, because she can't see them, still can't hear them properly. She can't communicate a damn thing the way she wants to. She struggles against her condition, trying to get up, trying to move. Someone's hand on hers tightens as another one pushes her back down, holds her to the bed.

They don't want her moving. Of course they don't, but she can't...she needs to know that Castle is okay.

She can't stop. Not until she knows. Someone needs to tell her Castle is okay.

* * *

"Kate, you have to calm down. Be still."

"Castle...Castle..."

"Katie, please. Relax. Just relax."

"I'm sorry, Mr. Beckett, but we're going to have to sedate her."

* * *

The hand gripping hers tightens, then becomes a soft caress, soothing her as she thrashes until suddenly, she feels calmer, drowsy.

Damn it, they're drugging her. Why are they doing that? They can't knock her out, not until she finds Castle.

She needs Castle.

_Where is...Castle...?_

* * *

"That's bullshit! You know just as well as I do that an injured patient can be disoriented as hell when they're in this kind of physical condition! Look at her!"

"Dr. Parish, if Mr. Castle is innocent then the evidence should stand to prove that, right? Until then, my hands are tied by hospital policy. I'm sorry. I have no choice. Now, I'll be back in to check on her in a couple of hours. Please don't hesitate to call a nurse if anything changes."

"Damn it, will you just—"

"Lanie...Nothing you say will dissuade her at this point."

"This is...it's wrong, Jim. All of this is just wrong."

"I know. Come on, she'll be out for a while. We'd best go tell the others."

"This is going to destroy, Castle. Kate, too, once she's coherent."

"All the more reason to tell Rick before someone else does."

* * *

_Just a prologue of sorts for now. I'm trying something a little different this time around, compared to most of the other fics I've written. A little darker, a little angsty. Advanced warning: Updates will more than likely come a bit slower than usual, but this is shaping up to be another lengthier multi-chapter fic. Do tell me what you think so far. I adore your feedback. :)  
_


	2. Chapter 2

_**12 Hours Earlier**_

In a last ditch effort to keep her from avoiding him for the umpteenth time that day, Castle grabbed hold of Kate's arm, fingers curled just below her elbow, and dragged his partner back with him inside the breakroom.

The look on her face after he did so was none too pleased. As he expected it would be, but it needed to be done. She just wouldn't stop running from him.

"Really?" she gives him a look, flicking her eyes down to the hand wrapped around her arm. "Are you sure you want to try manhandling me right now, Castle?"

"I'm not—" He pauses on a groan. Maddening, frustrating woman. "Kate, look, will you just stop for five minutes and talk to me? Please? I've tried asking nicely, I've waited until you weren't busy."

"In case you hadn't noticed, Castle, I'm still at work. Working. That means I'm busy. I don't have time for this."

A growl reverberates from deep in his throat as he runs the thick fingers of his free hand through his hair. She wants to avoid the issue, or rather, keep avoiding the issue. Being in a relationship with Kate Beckett did not make problems between them just magically disappear or cease to exist. It seemed to lead to more hurdles for them to jump over as time went by.

She's upset; of course she is. He'd said something that didn't agree with her, as he usually does, but this time she's not just annoyed, she's pissed off, and this is the fallout; passive aggression in the workplace and avoiding him whenever possible. But he's trying, isn't he? At least he's been trying to fix it. She just will not budge, won't give him a chance to—

"Now if you'll excuse me," she says, turning on her heel and that does it. He snaps.

"Damn it, Beckett!"

Silence.

His heart is pounding, his breathing quick, and she's just staring at him, mouth slightly agape, utterly taken aback by his sudden outburst.

The sound of footsteps approach from behind her and then Ryan and Esposito are poking their curious little heads inside the doorway. Great. Just great.

"Everything okay?" Ryan asks, both he and Esposito looking between the two of them with scrutinizing eyes.

Beckett looks to the boys cautiously, then back at him, and Castle makes the decision for them on what to tell the boys.

"Yeah," he says bitterly, brushing past her to reach over and grab their two reusable to-go cups from the counter. "Just _fine_," he adds, and she frowns, watching him, as if daring him to say something else. Instead he turns, heads to the opposite exit of the room.

"Where you goin', bro?" Esposito asks.

"Home," he tosses over his shoulder, defeated, and the three detectives watch in silence as he makes his way to the elevator.

Kate grits her teeth as she tears her eyes away from Castle's retreating form. With a shaky hand, she grabs an empty NYPD mug and pours some coffee into it, briskly adding in cream and sugar and stirring it with a rough hand. The boys look between each other, unsure of what to do, what to say to her. She knows they're curious; it's not often that they find her and Castle at odds with each other in this way, so they're worried, want to know what happened. She gets it, but she can't exactly be honest and reassuring with them without blowing their secret relationship out of the water. They've been suspicious enough already.

"Don't worry about it," she says, addressing their unasked questions, then goes for a subject change, "What else have you gotten on Brandy Palmer?"

Brandy Palmer was the victim of the current case they were on. She was a personal assistant for a global franchise, found beaten to death in her apartment two days ago. The team was still struggling to find any solid leads on who may have killed her.

Ryan steps forward, a little hesitantly. "Uh, nothing really. But we may have gotten a hit on her boss' financials that indicates Castle's sneaky suspicion of them embezzling money from the company may be spot on."

Her eyebrow quirks up in interest. Just what she needs, a distraction; something productive to immerse herself into right now, something to help her completely forget about Castle flipping his lid because he just doesn't _think _before he speaks and she's being stubborn again and neither one of them are good at this relationship thing but God help her, she's hopelessly in love with the guy and—

Ugh. Work. She needs to just _work_.

"Show me."

* * *

She's exhausted. After hours of trying to track down a money trail she was hoping would lead her to evidence that Leon Cartwright was embezzling money from his company, Sunstreet Electronics, she and the boys came up with nothing solid. Brandy Palmer was dead, something in Sunstreet's financials didn't add up, and when there's no known enemies or other reasons family and friends can think of that an upstanding citizen would end up beaten to death in her apartment, they couldn't shake the thought that maybe she'd not been so upstanding after all.

Her autopsy showed that she wasn't into drugs, didn't even have a trace of alcohol in her system, or her apartment for that matter. She lived in an excellent SoHo neighborhood, was loved by everyone they spoke to about her, but family and close friends admitted that she was rolling in debt from student loans. So, they thought, maybe she got greedy. Money is always a strong motive for crime, especially murder. Leon Cartwright is a high-powered CEO of a global franchise and his personal assistant was dead. Perhaps Brandy caught on to some questionable activity and blackmailed him. Leon would have the means and opportunity for hiding his tracks, certainly the money to hold her at bay for the moment until he could call in a hit and take care of the problem.

They just hadn't found it yet, the key to the mystery. And despite her efforts to throw herself into her work and forget about Castle, it wasn't working. She needed her partner in on this and he wasn't there. He wasn't there, because they were fighting again, and that was never a recipe that made for efficient crime solving. He helped her think outside the box, but now she couldn't even concentrate and it only made the situation all the more frustrating for her.

She made a run at Cartwright in his office before she headed home for the night, feeling a little confrontational and needing to let off some steam. She was hoping he'd slip up, hoping that she'd be able to catch something that might give her something she needed. Instead, after a twenty minute chat of him talking circles around her questions, he calmly instructed one of his hulking bodyguards to show her the door when she boldly asked him if he was confident in his skills at playing hide and seek.

He flinched—she saw it—but it still gave her nothing to go on for now and needless to say, she was already in a foul mood before. Now she was fuming.

And that foul mood was about to grow even worse now that she turned the corner from the elevator of her building and found Richard Castle leaning against her door, messing with his phone.

"I thought you were going home, Castle," she grouses, hand shuffling in her bag for her housekey as she approaches.

"I did, hours ago. Had plenty of time to cool my head."

"You said you needed to be home tonight. For Alexis," she says flatly, and tries to reach past him to get to her door lock. He moves in front of it, blocking her. She glares at him.

"She went to bed an hour ago."

"And Martha?"

"I told my mother I needed to go do something. She didn't ask questions."

She sighs. "Yeah, well, that's lovely, Castle, but I'm tired, I'm hungry and I just want to get some decent sleep tonight."

She stands expectantly in front of him, waiting for him to clear out of the way of her door but he doesn't budge, just pockets his phone and crosses his arms over his chest. She should have expected it wouldn't be so easy to get rid of him.

"I want to talk."

"Castle, I don't have time for this—"

And just like in the precinct this afternoon, the calm in his features turns immediately to indignation as he cuts her off.

"You have plenty of time!" he shouts. "We've been busy, I know that, but don't you care about me enough to want to _find _some time for me? Won't you even give me the chance to talk to you about this for even five minutes?"

Irritated, she steps further into his space, their eyes inches apart from each other, close enough to see every little pore, every tiny detail on the other's face. Just as he catches the slight, angry squint of her eye, she sees it when his upper lip twitches, a nervous tick as he awaits her to unleash her fury.

"That's the problem, though, isn't it? I made us time, Castle. Three whole days all to ourselves. We'd be there right now if it wasn't for..." she trails off, not finishing the thought.

His jaw slackens, surprised. "You said you were okay with cancelling. That you understood."

"And I did. I do! If you need to be here for your daughter, I'm not going to deny you that. It's the fact that my budget apparently wasn't good enough for you in the first place—"

"Wait, what?" he interrupts, surprised. "That's not...Kate, is that what you thought?"

She doesn't answer him, tries to shove him out of the way of her door instead. "Will you move, Castle?"

He shakes his head. "No," and then his tense posture relaxes, his arms dropping at his sides, hands moving for hers but she's quick, sees it coming and steps away swiftly.

"God, forget it. I'll just sleep at the precinct."

Next thing he knows, she's turned her back on him and is walking down the hallway. Running away again. He gives chase, walking just a short pace behind her. The elevator in her building is slow, there's no rush to catch her. He doubts she'd even head to the precinct anyways.

Just as she's jabbing at the call button with her finger, she feels him closing in behind her, his hands at her hips, chest at her back.

"Please stop, Kate. I don't want to fight you."

His warm breath spills over her shoulder as he noses at her scalp, ruffling her hair. She dips her forehead into the wall, frustrated, because she's so angry but she doesn't want to be. She doesn't want to fight him, she never does. But as much as she hates it, sometimes it makes it easier to deal with her feelings, especially the ones she's been feeling since this morning.

And now he's given up the fight, because he knows. She's been hiding it all day but now he knows, why she's so upset, why she hasn't wanted to talk to him, why she's been avoiding the subject at every turn.

"You thought I didn't want to go to L.A.," he murmurs, his lips moving to her temple.

The elevator arrives and doors open but they both ignore it. Her eyes slip shut as he circles his arms around her waist, tugging her back into his chest.

"I get it, Kate. When I suggested we go someplace more exotic instead, I hurt your feelings. You thought I felt like Los Angeles wasn't good enough for me."

She says nothing because she doesn't have to. He's read her like a book, just like he always does. Once he finds the right page, it's all over from there.

"Kate, that's not what I meant. I just wanted to make it up to you, make our trip something bigger because of the fact that I was the reason we cancelled."

She'd be lying if she said that thought hadn't crossed her mind, but when it comes down to it, she still has her insecurities. How do you get a gift for a man who has everything, who has enough money to buy what he wants and do whatever it is he wants to do? So she didn't. She planned a trip for them instead. She'd nearly given in to her feelings that night in a L.A. hotel room with him and she just thought—maybe now that they were together, now that they weren't trying to hunt down her friend's killer, she could enjoy the city of Los Angeles with him like they hadn't been able to before. Far enough away from home to avoid getting caught by family, easy enough on her budget that Castle wouldn't protest to her idea. Which he didn't. But then the issue with Alexis coming home for the weekend came up and they scrapped the whole idea. She cancelled taking days off from work, joined the boys on the Palmer case and here they were, fighting.

Well, maybe not for long.

"Whether it's here, L.A., some luxury hotel in the tropics or a miserably deserted island, it doesn't matter to me. All I need, all I want with me, is you, Kate. Just you."

"I'm not spending any of our anniversaries on a deserted island, Castle," she huffs dryly, a small hint of strain and emotion in her voice that she quickly gets in check, and he notices it, but doesn't comment, instead goes for levity.

"How about a deserted apartment?" he husks into her ear, and can feel the unmistakable shiver run down her spine. She turns in his arms, glistening eyes seeking out his.

"I think there's one down the hall," she offers, then shrugs her shoulders on a sigh.

He smiles, pulling her into a hug. "Yeah?"

She lists into him, her hands reaching for his jacket as she burrows into him, her nose at his throat.

"Yeah."

He embraces her tightly against his chest, pressing his lips to the crown of her head as she relaxes in his arms, the stress of everything draining from her.

"I'm such a pain in the ass," she says after a moment, but he shakes his head.

"I should never have made the suggestion of going to Tahiti after you couldn't refund the tickets. I wasn't thinking."

"I overreacted."

"So did I."

She pulls back from him and says sternly, "Will you shut up and let me take the blame already?"

That makes him laugh.

"Okay." he concedes. "It's entirely your fault."

"Well, I wouldn't say entirely," she starts and on an exasperated groan, Castle slides his hands up to cup her cheeks, his mouth stealing her words in a hard, fast kiss. Her bag drops to the floor as he crowds into her, pinning her back against the wall as she opens for him, their lips sealing as he deepens the kiss.

When he comes up for air, he snatches her bag from the ground, slinging it over his shoulder before turning his attention back to a breathless Kate.

"No more talking," he says.

"No more talking," she agrees, and he lifts her. Her legs come around his hips, ankles locking behind him, fastening her to him, and then her lips are on his again, her hands in his hair as he walks them back to her apartment.

He sets her down at the door, if only so she can get out her key and unlock her apartment door, but once it's open, she jumps him. He marches inside, kicking the door shut behind him, intent on showing her a fantastic three-month anniversary during the few hours they have left of it.

* * *

_Yup, we're heading back in time for a little bit before getting back to where the prologue starts off at :) Can't let you guys be all confused and wondering how on earth Kate ended up in the hospital, right?_


	3. Chapter 3

"If this is what make-up sex is like with you, maybe we should fight more often."

She can't help it; she barks out an elated laugh at his off-hand comment. Honestly, she gets what he means. They had barely made it to her bedroom in their haste, both of them frantic, things heating up so very quickly in their desperation to just have and to feel one another. The tension between them had just been sizzling, building steadily all day and they finally hit the breaking point. Clothes were shed and tossed haphazardly everywhere as they stripped them from their bodies. He practically tore her button-down off in his impatience to get it off of her and she can't fight the smile thinking back at how she'd laughed when she had to pluck a stray button off of the sweaty skin at his neck after noticing it had stuck onto him midway throughout their love making.

He took his time with her the second time, drawing out her pleasure, worshipping her body like the goddess she was to him, every action, every touch and every whispered word in her ear an apology and promise both.

Now feeling boneless, completely spent, lying tucked against his side, her cheek resting along his clavicle, arm draped across his ribs, she couldn't move if she wanted to, and she really, _really _doesn't want to. After they make love, he tends to keep an arm curled possessively about her torso, as though it's an instinctual action he's not even fully aware of doing when he does it. She's teased him before about being clingy after sex, but truthfully, she loves it, loves this intimacy with him. She wouldn't have it—him—any other way.

"I don't like fighting with you, Castle."

Her voice comes out soft, breathless, somewhat of a plea, and it gets to him, pulls at his rapidly beating heart. His fingers curl at her hips, tugging her closer into the cave of his body and she nestles further into the broad expanse of his chest as his hand starts to draws slow circles on her lower back with his fingertips.

"I know. Neither do I, but it's bound to happen, right? It's what we do. We've never really seen eye-to-eye on everything."

"Definitely not," she teases, pressing her lips to the soft skin at his collarbone.

"Definitely not," he repeats, a lilt to his voice.

"But we're always okay, after everything," she says after a moment of quiet, just the sound of heavy breathing returning to normal and the feel of his warm skin against hers making her sated body sing all the more gratification.

"Always," he affirms, a word that makes her nuzzle into him in response to it. She loves that word and everything it means. To them, for them, all of it.

Castle presses an irrepressible smile into the crown of her head as she sighs contentedly in his arms.

"Remy's is still open, you know. If you're still hungry."

She lifts her head, watching him thoughtfully as he continues drawing patterns into her skin, both of his eyes closed.

It's nothing fancy and probably not at all romantic by the standards of most people, but Remy's has become their place. They've gone there for burgers and shakes multiple times over the years, sometimes with the boys, sometimes just by themselves, and it's where they had both their first unofficial and official dates. Funny, how she once scoffed at Castle's idea of Greg and Amy's romantic meeting place being a Burgeropolis in Jersey, and yet she had units stake out the burger joint anyways, which turned out to indeed be the couple's special place. Burgeropolis, Remy's...sometimes you just don't need fine dining and candlelit dinners to feel romanced and loved by the man of your dreams, she supposes.

It's like Castle said: location matters not, as long as they're together.

"Remy's sounds wonderful right now," she starts, but doesn't finish her thought before a yawn overtakes her.

"But you don't feel like going anywhere," he finishes for her.

"I'm just exhausted after everything."

"Sorry."

She frowns. "No, not because of—Right now. I mean just now."

"Oh," he says, mouth curving back into a grin.

"Yeah," she returns with a smile of her own. Truth be told, the fighting definitely took it out on her all day, but she's not about to bring that can of worms back up again. Best to just let it go, move forward.

She's good. _They're _good. That's all that matters.

"I can go grab it while you rest," he offers. "The usual?"

Kate nods in confirmation. "Just hold the fries this time, 'kay?"

"You can steal some of mine," he says, because she always does anyways.

She watches him rooting around her bedroom floor for his clothing, his lips quirking and twisting in thought as he looks around and thinks about where his things could be. They really made a mess of the place tonight. Well, more than usual, anyway.

"Can you stay tonight?"

Castle's eyes lift from the carpet of her dark bedroom floor and up to her eyes. His gaze is soft and concerned and shit, maybe she gave away a little too much on the feelings side of things in her voice. She isn't usually so open about these sort of things, or so needy after a fight.

When did she get so sappy and vulnerable when it came to him? Maybe _she _is the true clingy one here, not Castle.

"It's okay if you don't. I'm just happy you're here right now, is all."

"Kate, if you want me to stay, I can stay. Alexis can wait a few hours. I'll just slip out early in the morning if need be—"

"Castle."

Her voice calls to him just as he's nearing the threshold of her bedroom door, bending to pick up his discarded shirt he's found. He turns back, meeting her eyes, and something he sees in the green depths—need, want, love, and so much more—propels his feet forward, marching him right back to her. He kneels on the edge of her bed, reaches a hand out to brush a few strands of hair from her eyes with his fingers, and her eyelids close to the touch. When they reopen, her eyes carry so much adoration in one simple look that he just can't hold himself back from her. He lowers himself over her, his mouth on hers, his kiss tender, languid, perfect.

He's so perfect. And hers. She's all his. Three months together and neither of them can really grasp how much that means.

He'd do anything for her and on some level she knows it, the extent of which he'd go to for her. It's why she tries to keep some semblance of a distance between them still, why she rarely puts her needs at the forefront even if things becomes too much. He has a family at home that needs him, too, and she refuses to come between them. He knows that, but it's still difficult sometimes, trying to be there for his girls—all three of them. Someone always gets left out and he hates it, hates that he can't always be there for her when his daughter needs him, too, and vice versa.

"I love you, you know that?" she breathes, and peppers a few quick kisses to his jaw, as though she knows exactly what he's thinking about. His lips curl up as he lingers, nodding, and then she's shoving him away playfully, pushing the shirt in his hand back into his chest.

"Good. Now go get me food."

He laughs. "Okay. I'll wake you when I get back."

"Who says I'll be asleep?"

"Oh, you'll be asleep," he says knowingly, kissing her lips one last time. She hums her agreement because he's right, her eyelids are already heavy with the fatigue of the day.

His eyes remain fixed on hers at the doorway, both of them sharing a silent look and smile, and then he leaves her sighing in his absence, snuggling beneath the covers of her bed. His lingering scent and warmth in the sheets quickly lull her tired body into sleep.

* * *

Judging by the way her body belligerently protests her attempts at waking, she couldn't have been asleep long before startling awake to a noise in her apartment. She grumbles as she stretches her arms out above her head, a heavy yawn escaping her as she sits up in bed. She can hear something rustling then crashing to the floor and she groans.

"Castle, if you broke another one of my plates I'm gonna hurt you," she mutters sleepily on a laugh before dragging herself out from beneath the covers.

Huh. She can't smell any food. Hard to mask the delectable scent of cheeseburgers and fries from the paper bag Remy's sends food to-go in.

"Castle?" she calls quietly, just barely poking her head out of the doorway, but it's dark, much too dark. All of the lights are just the way they left them coming into the apartment as she and Castle made their way to her bed.

The stark realization that Castle is _not _the one in her apartment makes her blood run cold and the panic lasts about a glimmer of a second before she bolts back into her bedroom. She dives over the bed, her unclothed body sliding across the bedsheets with ease, completely unhindered by any of the linens. Swiftly throwing open the nightstand drawer she keeps her weapon in, she reaches her hand inside.

Empty. No gun.

Shit. She never put it away in the first place and she has no idea where it could be right now, given the state of her undress and the disorder of her bedroom.

Stupid. She's a _cop_ for God's sake. How could she be so stupid?

Kate shakes the thought off because it's no use to her right now. No sense in berating herself when what's done is done. There's someone in her apartment and she needs her gun—now.

She was wearing her shoulder holster today so it must have come off before the shirt and it can't be too hard to spot, but the apartment is just so dark. Would flipping on the bedside lamp be worth the risk? It could mean alerting her intruder to her presence, first and foremost, and depending on how fast she can locate the Glock, a possible visual of the interior of her bedroom.

She doesn't get the time to make the decision, as heavy footsteps sound from her living room, heading her way.

Shit.

No way in hell she's flipping that light on now. She knows the layout of her own bedroom and her entire apartment by memory, even in the darkness, which means Home Field advantage is hers.

_Play it safe, Beckett._

Staying low to the ground and moving as slow and silently as a cat stalking their prey, she inches her way along the side of the bed, her hand feeling around at the ground beneath her. Just her jeans and a few shoes, but definitely no gun on this side. Just as she reaches the end of the bed, contemplating moving to the other side, a hulking shadow appears at the doorway to her room, masking what little light from the living room she had. She ducks her head the best she can and looks up to find his silhouette the only thing visible with the moonlight shining from the room behind him.

It has to be a man, given the sheer size of him. Around Castle's height, but definitely much bigger built.

She keeps her back tucked against the edge of the mattress, barely peeking her head around the corner to keep an eye on her intruder. The man's head tilts as he peers inside and from his profile she can see what appears to be a ski mask on his face. The possibilities of his motive for being here start running in her mind. A ski mask could lower his visual acuity, especially pertaining to peripheral vision, giving her yet another advantage so that's good. Dark clothes and a mask—perhaps he's just a common thief, burglarizing her for valuables? If that were the case, fighting him off may not need to occur as he might just make a break for it.

The man then starts to step inside and she can hear his hand searching along the wall adjacent to him for a light switch. Why turn on a light now, if he hadn't before?

_Because now he's looking for something._ Did he hear her moving around?

Whatever the case, seeing her unclothed and vulnerable will not be good position to put herself in at all. Decision time—Could she bluff her way into scaring him off?

"NYPD, don't move."

To her surprise and sheer horror, the man laughs, a cold, rumbling sound.

"Should've stayed in hiding, sweetheart," the man informs her confidently, and her breath catches when he finds the light switch and flips it on. Her eyes stare at him over the edge of her mattress and, to Kate's horror, she sees her service piece in his gloved right hand.

"Already found your gun."


	4. Chapter 4

He has her gun.

There is a _masked man _inside of her _home_ and she is _naked_, and he is twirling around _her gun_ on his finger.

No matter how she looks at it, this does not bode well. Does not bode well at all.

"Imagine my surprise when I found this little beauty sitting out in the open, just mine for the taking?"

Forget that she doesn't have a single article of clothing on her body and is basically hunched over and hugging the side of her bed with the bare skin of her back. She should have known better, replayed the evening in her head. Castle would have relieved her of her coat before getting to removing her holster and gun, which meant her gun hadn't been in the bedroom at any point in her search for it. She wasted precious time looking for a gun that was likely already in this man's possession, time that could have been spent plotting an escape or calling for help instead.

Damn it, if only she and Castle hadn't been fighting today, she never would have—

Oh God. _Castle_. He could be coming back at any minute for all she knows, and get caught up in all of this right along with her. The light is on now, her intruder can see everything, he's got her gun, and she's lost every advantage she seemingly had before.

Either she or Castle, or possibly both of them, are going to be at this man's mercy if she doesn't think fast. She needs to diffuse the situation. He's obviously here for a reason. If he's a burglar, she can give him what he wants and maybe he'll be on his way. She hasn't seen his face, she wouldn't be able to ID him. She's of no threat like this.

"If it's cash and valuables you want, go ahead and take them. They're yours."

The man laughs again from her doorway, that harsh, apathetic sound reverberating from his throat. Not a burglar, then. This is just getting more fantastic for her by the minute.

"Amazing how quick you cops turn tail once you've lost your piece!" he barks out, another laugh following suit.

She has to shake off the urge to tell him to shut the hell up with the horse laugh. Getting angry or combative with him won't help her any, annoying as he is with his obvious sense of empowerment over her. She's at a very real disadvantage here and the odds are not in her favor whatsoever if he becomes violent. She needs to be careful and she needs to be smart, not a smart ass.

"If you're not here for money, what do you want from me?"

She keeps her voice trained low, carefully unaffected by her situation. The last thing she needs right now is for this guy to realize how truly scared she is—which is, in a word, shitless—not just for herself, but for her unsuspecting boyfriend who has yet to return to her.

Had this guy been watching her apartment? Did he see Castle leave before breaking in and knew she was alone?

"You sure you wanna know? Because I'm pretty sure you're not gonna like the answer."

The next time he laughs, the sound and visual of his body language during the action strikes a memory in her mind. She knows that laugh. She's seen this man before.

She racks her brain for a few seconds as the guy looms over her, leering but unmoving, and then it hits her. The first time she and Castle had been in Leon Cartwright's office, one of his goons by the door was joking around with the other guard. One of them kept laughing after every little thing that was said, whether the comment was from his mouth or the other guy's, and it was grating on her nerves. They were trying to get information about Brandy Palmer out of the man they suspected of being behind her death and she had to get Cartwright to make the guards leave the room so they could talk without distractions.

That same guard was the one who escorted her out of the office this evening when she took another go at his boss.

Shit. She pushed Cartwright's buttons and he must have sent this guy to follow her home.

"I remember now. You work for Cartwright. Coleman, he called you."

"Well damn. You're an observant little detective, aren't you missy?"

"Yeah, well, that's the shitty thing about face masks for disguises. They don't conceal your voice."

Probably not the best thing to say but she's fairly certain her moment of boldness didn't go unnoticed and won't have the guy viewing her as some damsel in distress that he can toy with at his every whim. Coleman huffs his laugh this time though, and were it not for the mask over his face, she's pretty sure she'd be able to see him smirking at her. She can just barely catch the upturn of the corner of his mouth where it peaks out from the mouth hole.

"I'm flattered you remember me," he says with a sense of pride. She ignores the statement.

"So, why are you here? Cartwright knows I'm getting close to the truth, so he's sent in his guard dog to take care of me?"

"I dunno, lady. Looks like that partner of yours already took _real _good care of you before he left tonight, didn't he?" he snickers, taking a couple more steps toward her and leering over the bed at her. Kate grimaces in disgust, covering up what she can with her arms and has to swallow hard at the lump forming in her throat. She's hardly got anything to be modest about but like hell is she going to let this thug see her body.

"It's too bad he left, though," he continues on with a sick, twisted amusement in his voice. "I was really looking forward to watching the pretty boy squirm, but something tells me loverboy would be a bit wilder than you to deal with."

Kate's stomach twists and she can almost feel the bile start rising in her esophagus. God, if Castle comes back now, if he sees her like this with this man threatening her, she doesn't even want to think about what he might do to try and save her. How he might sacrifice himself to get her out of this. The man tried to save her from a bullet the year before. It makes her sick with worry to think of him trying it again—and succeeding this time.

She can't let it happen. She can't watch him get hurt, or worse yet, killed, in her stead.

She has to do something. Now.

"I'm unarmed and you've got my gun. If you wanted me dead, you'd have shot me already, so I'll ask again...What do you want from me?"

Coleman's lips smack, and he lifts the hand carrying her gun to his chin, scratching at his covered skin with a knuckle.

"Information."

"On?"

"The boss knows you guys are closing in on him fast. His orders are for me to off you since you're the lead detective on that bitch's case."

A chill runs through her spine at the casual way he says it, like killing her would be no big deal to him. Just another part of the job. Put in the time, do the deed, get the pay, move on to the next person needing to be dealt with.

Even after all these years spent working in homicide, she's fairly certain she'll never understand killers for hire, or how these hitmen can sleep at night when they routinely take lives for a living. It boggles the mind. She couldn't sleep for a week after the first time she had to shoot a man, and that shot had only been to disarm him, his injury nowhere near life-threatening. And as for Dick Coonan, the man she shot who was the contract killer responsible for her own mother's death—she tried giving the guy CPR after fatally shooting him.

She never wants to take a life, even if it's the life of a murderer.

"I'm not into killing cops though, see. I get caught, I'm not much a fan of needles. So here's the deal: You give me everything you cops have on the boss and I'll leave you here a little banged up before we're on our merry way."

Huh. Not a fan of needles. His reluctance to kill her could work to her advantage in some small way. Obviously he means to do some harm by the end of this, regardless of what she does or doesn't tell him, but she'll be damned if she's going down without a fight. She doesn't need a gun to protect her life when she's still got an arsenal of self defense tactics up her proverbial sleeve.

Cartwright's not getting away with murder, not when she knows without a shadow of a doubt now that he is absolutely guilty, and he's sure as hell not going to take her down, either. She's survived an explosion, hypothermia, a gunshot and a dip in the Hudson on top of her other brushes with death over the years. Some low-life thug isn't going to have Kate Beckett meeting her maker, that's for damn sure.

"So, we have a deal?"

* * *

Remy's is bustling with people when Castle gets there. He should've known it would be; it's a Friday night, after all. Their first date had been on a Friday, too, and although he later lamented and apologized to her about it for not being private or intimate enough of a setting, Kate reassured him with a brush of her lips against his that it was absolutely fine and she had a wonderful time with him.

It didn't matter to her that they were surrounded by a ton of people. Everyone was enjoying the start of their weekend, much like they were themselves, and she was just happy to be off work and able to spend time with him in a place they loved to go to. Remy's required no fuss to get all dressed up after work, or worrying about what to wear, and best of all, no reservation necessary for getting seating, just a little bit of a wait.

They'd held hands while they sat waiting for a booth to open up inside, and spent their dinner laughing over a couple of cheeseburgers and milkshakes, discussing the events of the day. No fries for her that night, either, but she inevitably stole from his anyways like she always does, and eventually he started offering them up to her after a while, loving the way she'd smirk at him before nipping the fry from his fingers, occasionally catching the rough skin of his fingertips on purpose in the process. He's got a sneaky suspicion now that that scenario may be the main reason why she always neglects to order some of her own. Stealing his just opens up far more opportunities to tease him and be playful.

And he loves seeing her so playful.

Despite his initial worries, to his gorgeous, extraordinary girlfriend, their first date had been perfect, all because it was so natural, so them. They didn't need to treat each other to expensive luxuries; it was a luxury in and of itself that they were here, together, after everything that had happened over the past year and a half.

After today's fight, he's going to have to keep drilling that knowledge and realization into his head in the future. She said it once before, even if just in a joking manner; she's a simple girl. Sure, he'll be tempted to lavish her with gifts and flowers and want to give her the whole world at times, but sometimes all she'll need, all she'll want, is a simple cup of coffee to make her smile in the morning and a lingering kiss to make her feel just how much he loves her.

"Order for Mr. Castle?" a voice calls out, breaking him from his thoughts, and Castle gets up from his seat, heads over to the man calling out his name. He thanks him as the guy hands over the bag with their burgers and fries, and then the to-go tray carrying their shakes; chocolate for him, strawberry for her. She may always steal his fries, but he's a bit guilty of taking sips off of her shakes so that he can have both flavors at once without mixing them together and making the entire shake just taste like an odd, poorly devised concoction of chocolate-covered strawberries.

Mm, chocolate-covered strawberries. Now there's an idea for a future evening. He bets she'd enjoy that simple pleasure. A lot.

He steps outside and is glad to see that the cab driver believed him and stuck around for him despite the wait. Considering how packed Remy's was upon their arrival, he'd promised to pay the guy handsomely if he could wait him out. After he flashed a couple large bills out of his wallet to make his point, the cabbie looked him over curiously with a weary eye and Castle couldn't tell if it was dollar signs going off in his head, or just pure disbelief showing on his face.

When he slips back inside the cab, he settles the food down beside him and pulls out his phone, hesitating briefly as to whether or not he should call and wake his sleeping beauty now, or when he gets back to her apartment. Assuming she's asleep at all, though he's highly certain she is, considering the state she was in when he left her. She can be quite the lazy creature, he's noticed, now that she's started to loosen up, relax more and let herself live a little. He muses with the idea of teasing her about getting herself decent before he arrives back and then he can't resist and his finger is on the send button and her smiling face is lighting up his screen as it dials.

It rings until it goes to voicemail.

Ah, well, that settles it then, doesn't it? He's waking her up when he gets back after all.

* * *

When the trill of her phone in the living room (it was in her coat pocket, if she recalls correctly) startles Coleman into turning his back on her to look toward the direction of the sound, Beckett silently gives thanks to Castle—she knows that it's him. He's the only one it would be at this hour tonight—and takes the chance for what it is. She makes her move.

She pounces up from the floor with a swift, cat-like movement, intent on that right hand of his, on retrieving back her gun. Quick as she is, it's not quick enough to reach him though before he starts to turn back around and the realization quickly dawns on him that he's about to be assaulted by her.

Coleman braces himself for impact in response, his hands moving over his chest in his panic over what to do to defend himself, and by the time Beckett's hands reach his to execute a Krav Maga gun disarm, it's too late to be effective enough. Rather than her movement allowing her to disarm him and take back control of her weapon, they spin around with her hand firmly locked onto his wrist and the Glock instead flies out of his hands and skitters across the floor, into the living room and under her coffee table.

"You crafty little bitch," he swears, rocking backward as Kate quickly jumps back and out of his reach, but he's still closest to the gun, and that leaves her with only one option now if she has any hope of getting out of this relatively unscathed—

Taking her chance with fighting off a man twice her size, and making sure he doesn't get anywhere near that gun again before Castle gets back.

* * *

_The general consensus amongst reviews and PMs I received in regards to Chapter 3 seemed to be that I need to update faster. Consider this author note my apology for the wait and my confirmation that I read you loud and clear lol. I'll try to update faster in the future but other life obligations have been getting in the way again recently, so please bear that in mind. I am but a simple college girl, not a full-time fic writer ;)  
_


	5. Chapter 5

Back when she first joined the academy, and was going through her initial self defense training for the force, her instructor taught the class not only how to defend themselves, but how to conduct themselves in a conflict, read their opponent's movement and engage accordingly. She was told that, as a woman, and even one in uniform, men would still view her differently, take her presence and authority lightly. She would be seen as weak, but that mindset didn't mean that they would go soft on her, and it certainly didn't mean that she would have any more of an advantage over them by being underestimated.

Because of this, over the years she has maintained her body with routine exercise, and she regularly spars with other cops in the precinct to keep herself in top condition. Man, woman, bigger or smaller than her, less or more skilled, it didn't matter. Each person was a new experience, and a chance to broaden her own personal experience as a fighter. If someone was looking for a sparring partner, she was always game. Sparring regularly kept her on her toes, her abilities sharp. She's gone out of her way to practice various forms of martial arts over the years, gaining a proficiency in everything from your standard kickboxing and karate to the more obscure arts such as Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu and Krav Maga. It would be fair to say she is confident in herself as a competent, well-rounded fighter in hand-to-hand combat, but skill means nothing unless you can apply it, and apply it well in a fight. Training is just that—training. A controlled environment, her opponent not out to cause her harm and her life in no danger.

In the span of her career, Kate Beckett has had her share of fights over the years that have ended up with her finding herself in a precarious situation. Sometimes it's due to her over-eagerness in chasing down a suspect, allowing them to get the drop on her, other times it was from arrogant overconfidence, and even worse yet, from pure, blind rage. After a certain situation this past summer, she's not too keen on finding herself succumbing to either of those possibilities in a fight ever again, if she can help it.

With a man over twice her size now looking upon her with all of his fury—his breathing harsh through the black material of the mask, the whites of his eyes now burning red—she knows she can't afford any mistakes here. One slip and it will all be over for her. He may come off as a bumbling oaf for the most part, but he's made it explicitly clear to her that he's killed before. His sheer size and brute strength will be enough to incapacitate her the moment he's able to get a hold of her, and while an angry opponent can be seen as an advantage on her end, it's also a double-edged sword. An enraged fighter is as dangerous and unpredictable as a wild animal.

She recalls the cardinal rule her instructor taught her class, those many years ago: 'If you have to think, you're too slow.'

Beckett waits him out defensively, watching his every subtle movement, even just the twitch of a muscle, with a careful eye to see if he'll turn and go back for the gun behind him. It would be a stupid move on his part, she knows, as it would require him not only to turn his back on her, but get on the ground in order to fish the Glock out from beneath her coffee table. For this same reason, she doesn't dare try it herself. Should he do so, however, the action would give her an opportunity to make an offensive strike against him before he can even get his hands on it, and really, she's sort of hoping he's pissed off and cocky enough to try it.

He doesn't.

"Know what? I think I'm gonna kill you after all, bitch," he spits out before charging at her, "And then I'm gonna kill that boyfriend of yours, too!"

Shit. Not what she needed to hear right now, not when her body reacts so instinctively, a tightness building in her chest when her heart skips a beat at the mention of Castle. Not good. She needs to stay focused, needs to keep her head in the game. Needs to make it out of this okay for her sake, and for Castle's.

_If you have to think, you're too slow, _she reiterates in her mind. _Don't think. Use your skills and act!_

She feels like Nikki Heat in that moment, unclothed and fending off against a home intruder who is after her life. Only, unlike in Castle's book, it's not a Russian mobster she's facing off against, just some punk-ass thug from the Bronx, probably not yet even as old as she is.

She side-steps him quickly enough before he gets too close, dodging toward her dresser and watching as he slips up on a discarded piece of clothing on the floor, making him crash headlong into the foot of her bed. He groans angrily as his knee connects with the oak frame, then swings an arm back around towards her. She has to jump backward at once to evade the wildly thrown fist, which connects instead to a wooden jewelry chest atop the dresser beside her. The contents spill out into the air, earrings, necklaces and rings flying in all directions around the room.

Beckett makes a quick play for the empty chest as it lands near her and she hurls it back at him with as much force as she can muster, intent on clocking him in the head with it. It connects, his head recoiling with a twist to the side, but ultimately it does nothing to slow him down or stall his assault. Like an angry, injured bull in a bull fighting ring, he just keeps barreling at her, seeing nothing but the red cape.

She briefly considers the idea of screaming for help, but no one would hear her if she tried, not in this apartment and especially not from the depth of her bedroom at the far end of her home. The insulation and thick walls are one of the reasons she was drawn to the place, because the outside noise stayed where it belonged, and allowed her to have those comfortable, serene nights where she could just light up a few candles, pour a glass of wine and read a good book, unperturbed by the bustling city or any noisy neighbors. Even were that not the case, unfortunately most people in New York City rarely even react when they hear a cry for help in the first place. It's rare to find someone who wants to get involved in a dispute and put themselves out there for a stranger. Screaming at this point would likely only show Coleman that she's scared and tip him off to the fact that she has no idea if she'll be able to win this one.

He comes at her again, leading her to hop up onto the mattress n order to islip away, but not before grabbing her bedside lamp and sending it hurtling back at him. He knocks it away with a fist, the porcelain shattering against the wall, flinging in fractured pieces all around them. She turns her head, glances down to the empty doorway, the now clear path laid out before her.

Could she make it to the gun in time?

She hesitates and ponders the thought one second too long, as Coleman barrels over the bed, wrapping his thick, gloved fingers around her left ankle. She yelps in surprise when he yanks on her, the strength of him easily tipping her off balance and sending her tumbling to the ground. Her elbow lands hard with a crack on the hardwood flooring, the contact of her ulnar nerve being hit sending a sharp pain through the length of her arm. She quickly attempts to straighten out her arm to hold herself up and get leverage to escape from him, but the joint won't bend, the bone probably fractured and or dislocated.

Adrenaline kicks in, giving her a burst of energy for fight or flight, but it's nothing to mask the pain. She grits her teeth through it and thrashes about, trying to jostle her leg away from his grasp, kicking back at the man with both legs to try and shake him off.

The effort is futile.

Like a terrier on its prey, his grip on her is locked and he won't let go. Coleman drags her back toward him and she swings at him with her good arm, landing a solid hit to his cheekbone with the heel of her palm. He cries out, cursing at her before yanking her off the bed by that same hand. She struggles, but his iron grip is too strong. He takes a couple steps before throwing her against the far wall beside her en-suite bathroom. Her head and back slam into the full-length mirror along the wall, the force enough to shatter the glass, and she can feel it as the broken fragments dig into her skin, piercing into her shoulder blades and lumbar area.

_Oh God_, she thinks dazedly, her head spinning and body slumping to the floor as she helplessly watches him close in on her again.

_I'm sorry, Castle. This is it._

* * *

He whistles to himself happily as the elevator ascends to Kate's floor, bag of burgers in one hand, tray of milkshakes carefully balanced on the other. He lets out a chuckle, thinking about how wide the cabbie's eyes went when he tossed him a couple hundreds and told him to keep the change despite it only being maybe a five mile trip and twenty, twenty-five minutes at the most. He was having a fantastic evening, he told the man, and wanted to share his good fortune. The cab driver then thanked him profusely and said, addressing him as "Mr. Castle", that he'd be more than happy to drive him around again. Just say the word and he'd be there, anytime, anywhere.

Stepping off the lift once reaching Kate's floor, he smiles to himself, thinking about how he might find her in bed. Will she be curled around his vacant pillow, knees tucked up to her chest, bedsheet slung high on her waist, that little pouty lip look she gets when she's out like a light?

With a smile plastered on his face, he momentarily entertains the idea of kissing her awake as though he were Prince Charming, but while dangling a burger in front of her nose. Totally unromantic, sure, but she did say she was hungry and sent him on the quest to obtain food, right? '_Wake up and smell the burger, Kate!_' She'd see the humor, maybe, or at least just give him an eye roll and laugh at how stupid he was being. Whatever the case, after the night they've had, they could sure use some funny. He at least knows that much.

As he nears her doorstep though, the happy smile is wiped cleanly off his face.

He didn't leave the door open when he left, and yet here it stands, slightly ajar, enough so that he can nudge it open with the tip of his foot.

"Kate?" he calls out, heart now racing in his chest, blood and pulse hammering in his ears, feeling it even at the tips of his fingers.

All of the lights inside the apartment are just how he left them. Off. Except...there's light permeating from inside her bedroom.

He drops the food off on her dining room table and as he steps further into the living room, he sees it—her gun beneath the coffee table.

Loose. No holster. Not how he left it, and certainly never how she would leave it, ever.

"Kate!" he shouts out, terror in his voice, and just as her name leaves his lips, a shadowy figure bolts from the light of the bedroom, plowing right into him in his haste to flee.

"Hey!" Castle yells out reflexively, hands reaching out and grasping onto the dark leather jacket of the masked man. The man takes a swing at him and Castle manages to move his head just fast enough to only be grazed across the cheek by a gloved knuckle. He retaliates with a blow of his own, fist landing harshly across the man's jaw.

The fight escalates between the two, both men exchanging hits and thrashing about the apartment, slamming into furniture as they grapple with each other, each trying to gain the upperhand. Castle narrowly dodges a fist intended for his face that instead hits the shelving just outside of Kate's office, and it causes the man to hiss and howl out in pain, shaking his hand as though to shake off the tremendous pain. Castle takes the opportunity to dart behind him, go for the gun beneath the table, but when he turns around, hands raised in a shooting stance, he's halted in his tracks by the other man's sudden, chilling words.

"Might not want to be wasting your time with me, friend, when that gorgeous little fox of yours is bleeding out in her room right now."

Castle's posture stiffens, a shiver running down his spine, his blood run cold.

"Hell of a loss, too. She was a fiesty one, and that tattoo was damn sexy."

He's trembling so bad, he can't even move._ Oh God. Kate._

"Might not have much time left, brother, if you know what I mean," he laughs, then makes a break for it. The sight of him fleeing finally makes Castle somewhat snap out of his frozen state and he pulls the trigger once, twice, firing off a couple rounds, but his hands are still too shaky and neither shot hits their mark, only glancing off of the walls.

The man escapes, but he couldn't care right now. Not when...

Castle sprints into the bedroom, his eyes totally unprepared for the sight before him.

"Kate!"

* * *

_This chapter took me a while. Was rather difficult to write. I'm sure you can guess why. :(_


	6. Chapter 6

He finds her battered, bleeding, and prone just inside the door to her bedroom. A low, feeble mewling noise and labored breaths leave her lips as he approaches and a wave of desperate relief rushes out of him at the sight and sound of it because at least she's still breathing, still alive.

_"Might not have much time left, brother, if you know what I mean."_

God, he hasn't felt such a terror shudder through his body since that day last summer. The moment when he cradled her bleeding body after she had blacked out in his arms, and when he watched helplessly as she later went into cardiac arrest inside the ambulance while enroute to the hospital.

He's on the ground with her within seconds, zero hesitation in his movement, kneeling beside her as a careful hand touches to her shoulder, nudging her gently. She doesn't even flinch in response. He doubts if she's even conscious.

"Kate. Kate, it's me. It's Castle. Can you hear me?"

Nothing but a whimper in her throat escapes from her mouth, an action that is probably involuntary, not even in response to his voice. A tear slips down his cheek and gets lost in her tousled hair when he leans down and cradles her to his chest.

"Kate, I'm right here," he murmurs. "You're safe now. I've got you."

Afraid to move her for fear of causing more harm, his eyes survey her body, hurriedly checking her over for injury. Her back is covered in blood, which in itself is terrifying at first glance, but upon further inspection, the cuts from the glass appear to be nothing too major, not deep at all. The main injury that alarms him is the swelling on her forehead, just above her left eye. Was she hit with an object? Thrown into something?

As if hit by a sense of paranoia, he glances over his shoulder to be sure her assailant or someone else has not entered the apartment to finish the job. Only then does he drop the gun in his hand—her gun—in order to dig his cell phone out from his coat pocket. He dials 911 one-handed with trembling fingers, his other hand carding through her hair.

"Who the hell did this to you?" he wonders aloud as the phone rings and rings. God, he wishes she would just open her eyes, say something, anything to him.

The other end of the line finally picks up after what feels like an eternity of waiting to him and before the 911 operator even gets the chance to finish asking him what his emergency is, Castle's already rattling off with information as it jumps into his thought processes.

"I have an officer down," he says first, knowing that it's the surefire way to get Kate medical attention and a full alert of patrolling police officers over here as soon as possible to catch the bastard that hurt her.

"She's a homicide detective with the NYPD out of the 12th Precinct. Kate Beckett, badge number 41319. I'm her partner. She's been..." the words catch in his throat, choke him with grief, but he pushes them out anyway. "...severely beaten."

The kindly woman operator asks for Kate's home address, which Castle recites for her easily from memory, and then the operator asks him what Kate's condition is, if she's breathing, conscious, responsive to him.

"Yes," he replies, "She's breathing but she hasn't moved since I found her. She has a head injury and cuts all over her body." Castle takes a deep, anguished breath. "Please, you have to hurry," he begs.

After he's assured that help is on the way with an ETA of five minutes, the operator offers to stay on the line with him until units respond. He declines, instead dropping his phone to the ground in favor of his full attention going back to his injured partner.

His heart feels as though it's shattered into thousands of pieces, looking upon her, much like the shattered glass from the mirror and lamp that are scattered all around the room. As a veteran of many a crime scene, it's all too easy for him to guess by the cuts on her back and remnants of glass fragments still embedded in her skin as to what happened here tonight during his absence. Everything before his eyes reveals a story to his writer's mind.

She has defensive wounds and abrasions all over her hands and arms, many that are likely from protecting her face, which doesn't appear to be too injured compared to the rest of her body, other than the steadily swelling knot above her left eye, and the bleeding wound at the back of her head from where he surmises she hit the mirror. Much to his relief, she doesn't have any stab wounds that he can tell, and considering how the gun was loose in the living room, he can only assume he'd gotten here at the tail end of the scuffle, just in the nick of time, otherwise her attacker could have do so much more damage. He could have gone back out into the living room, grabbed the gun and she would have—

No. No, she's safe now. An ambulance is on the way. He's with her. She'll be fine. She just needs to go to the hospital and then they'll fix her up, good as new.

"You fought hard, didn't you, Kate? You weren't going down without a fight." A sad but proud smile blooms on his face before it's quickly washed away again by his emotions. "That's my girl."

He whispers softly to her, running a few fingers down her cheek before brushing his lips across her forehead, the bridge of her nose. Maybe it's just his imagination but he feels like her body tenses, then relaxes at his touch.

"My turn now, Kate. Help is on the way, so just hang on and leave everything to me, okay?"

He can hear the emergency services shuffling in the front door now, calling out their presence, and Castle presses a lingering kiss to her forehead and says a whispered "I love you" in her ear before lifting his head and calling back out to them, "In here!"

* * *

He rides in the back of the ambulance with her to the hospital, despite the protests of the patrol cops who first arrived on scene. The men wanted to take his statement before he left the apartment, but the medics attending to Beckett wanted to get her over to Bellevue as soon as possible and there was no way he was going to be leaving her now. He needed to stay by her side and make sure that she would be okay, that she would pull through. As if he had any doubts. Kate Beckett is indomitable. This wouldn't...

And besides. If it were him in her condition, he knows that she would fight tooth and nail to stay by his side. He's prepared to do the very same thing if he has to. They're more than just partners now. They're in this life together. You go, I go. No matter what.

Before he leaves with the medics, he makes a request of the uniforms to put in a call to Ryan and Esposito for him. Because he can't. He just can't break that news to them without breaking down himself. Not right now.

He has to make a promise to the men that he'll give his statement at the hospital when they send someone over there, and he agrees. Just as soon as he knows that Beckett is being taken care of. There's both an underlying reluctance and understanding to their nods as they let him go.

As much as everyone wants to catch the guy responsible for doing this to one of their own, the bond between partners in the NYPD is sacred, and no one dares to separate them. ECU would be able to collect whatever they can at her apartment in the meantime. Surely they'd be able to pick up something that would send them hot on this guy's trail. Castle's brief account in his witness statement could wait for now.

Inside the bus, they have her lying somewhat awkwardly on some pillows and extra sheets to prop her up so as to not aggravate any glass still present in the skin of her back. Her neck is in a brace, which he is assured is just precautionary and standard procedure, and her body is draped with a thin, white blanket. Castle clutches her hand tightly in his own beneath the cover of the blanket, hoping beyond hope that maybe she'll squeeze back or give him some sign that she knows he's there. He feels nothing but the pulse still thrumming hard and fast in her hand. She's still unmoving, hasn't even made a sound since before the medics even arrived at the apartment.

The EMT riding in the back of the bus with them didn't speak much on scene, but upon Castle's question as to how she was doing, the younger man explained that her vitals are slightly elevated due to the stress on her body and she's more than likely unconscious from the head trauma. He can't give him any more than that. She'll need a doctor to assess her. Castle deflates at that answer until the guy explains that they're already prepped and awaiting her arrival in the ER, and they'll be arriving in just a few minutes.

"She'll be okay," he offers to him, and Castle nods subtly. He then leans over, dipping his forehead down to rest against Kate's temple and makes a silent vow to her, the words echoing in his mind.

_I promise you, they won't get away with this._

* * *

When Ryan and Esposito arrive and find him in the waiting room, Beckett already having been taken back for treatment and testing, Castle looks like hell frozen over. He's hunched over in his chair in the busy lobby, face in his hands, knuckles covered in abrasions from his fight with the masked man and his clothing painted a red hue from Kate's blood. It's a sight that makes both men a little sick to their stomachs.

Castle doesn't even register their footsteps as they approach him, and when Ryan sets a hand down on his shoulder, the writer jolts to attention, a wild, haunted look in his eyes.

He looks exactly how they all feel.

"Unis called and told us everything. We got here as soon as we could," Ryan says softly, taking a seat to Castle's left.

"How'd this happen, bro?" Esposito asks, and all three men take notice of the strain in his voice. It's no secret that Javier Esposito is as fiercely loyal a friend and partner to Kate Beckett as any person could be with a teammate. Just like Castle would, the man would put his life on the line to save her without a second's hesitation, and for her to get hurt while off-duty when he had absolutely no idea that she was even in danger? It makes him feel a host of emotions, but especially useless.

No one could have prepared for or prevented this, and it eats all three of them alive.

"I...I don't know," Castle stammers. "I left to go grab us some burgers and when I got back, the door was open and her gun was on the floor and then this guy just came flying out at me from inside her room and I—"

He says it all in one breath and Ryan has to remind him to breathe, take a deep breath and just breathe.

"I tried to stop him, I did. But he made these comments about her and...he said she didn't have much time left. So I thought...I thought she was dying. I got too emotional and couldn't do a damn thing. I couldn't do a damn thing to stop him!"

Castle's clenched fist pounds into the arm rest of the chair he sits in and both Ryan and Esposito look upon him with somber, empathetic eyes.

"Oh God," Castle says suddenly. "Her dad. I have to...someone needs to call her dad."

"One step ahead of you, bro," says Esposito.

"We already took care of it. He's on the way right now," Ryan informs him.

Castle gives a little nod and a more relieved breath, but his head simply returns back to being hung low, chin nearly tucked into his chest, his hands wringing in his lap.

"Do you want us to call someone for you, Castle? Your mom, daughter?" Ryan asks tentatively, because clearly the presence of he and his partner are doing nothing to set the other man at ease.

"No," Castle says quickly. "Need to focus on Beckett now. I'm fine." He knows the boys don't buy it. Hell, he wishes he could believe it himself.

"I'm fine. Really," he states again. "Just...need to figure who did this to her. I made her a promise and I intend to keep it."

* * *

_I know, I know. Last chapter was horrific and depressing and deserving of my being hurled off a cliff and this one probably didn't really help to alleviate it that much. I'm sorry! But hey, I didn't make you wait long for the new chapter, right? Am I forgiven? Please?_


	7. Chapter 7

Jim Beckett arrives to Bellevue Hospital a quarter after midnight, around thirty minutes after his unconscious daughter had been admitted to the emergency room. He'd gotten the call from a very shaken Kevin Ryan who, at that point, didn't have much information himself on her condition. All he knew was that Kate had been attacked in her apartment, that Castle found her, and that the two of them were heading to the hospital by ambulance. Detective Ryan said that he and his partner Esposito were heading over to meet up with Castle right at that moment, and Jim's heart rate hasn't come down from the quick pace that it raced up to since answering the phone.

Ever since his daughter's shooting one year ago, phone calls late in the night have been a source of anxiety for the older man unless he sees that it's his daughter's name lighting up on his cell phone's caller ID. With her hectic work schedule, the late evening hours were typically the only time Katie got the chance to talk to him on days when she was working. They'd catch up on baseball and how their favorite team was doing in the MLB. Sometimes she'd tell him about the occasional bizarre cases that she was working on with Castle and the boys, but oftentimes she'd go off on a tangent from just about any conversation point they had going and tie it back to Castle in some way. She'd begin jabbering away about that partner of hers and it always makes him smile.

He wonders sometimes if she doesn't realize how affectionately she speaks of him, or if the level of adoration present in her voice when talking about Rick Castle had just become second nature to her now. To say his daughter cared about that man, and vice versa, would be the understatement of the year. He may not see her as often as he'd like due to how busy she is, but he can tell, if only by the the sound of her voice and the earful he gets over the phone, how deeply those feelings for Rick run.

But tonight, much to his horror, it wasn't the name "Katie" lighting up his cell phone's LCD screen. It was "Detective Ryan" instead. He knew, even before the words had left the younger man's mouth on the other end of the line. Something terrible had happened to Katie again, and now he was hoping beyond hope that this night wouldn't be the one he's been dreading since the day she left the academy.

That this wouldn't be the one that would finally take her away from him.

* * *

"Where is she?"

Much like after Kate was shot, her father was straight to the point, and not going to mince his words. As Jim approaches the three men, huddled together in a corner of the lobby, each of them carries the appearance to him of forlorn figures at a bus stop. It doesn't sit well with him.

Castle looks up first, tries to speak but, but he chokes on his words. Can't find the right things to say to the father of the woman he's so desperately worried about himself. He's still distraught and sick with worry.

Ryan, ever the reliable one in a pinch, tries some for them instead.

"They took her back before we got here," he explains, gesturing past Jim's shoulder and to a door just beyond them that leads into the treatment rooms at the back of the building. Jim nods in understanding.

"I tried to stay with her but they wouldn't let me go," Castle speaks up, trying to explain. Although he finds his voice, it cracks miserably at the end of his sentence and he winces himself at the sound of it.

Then his face twists and contorts into a pained expression before he says, "I should have stayed with her. I never should have left her alone."

The three other men immediately take note that he's not just speaking about here at the hospital, but back at her apartment. He was with her, and then he left, and she was attacked in his absence and he couldn't stop her assailant.

It doesn't take a genius to see that the man is swamped with guilt. She's his partner, and he feels like he's failed her. They get it.

Or at least, they think they do. In actuality, they have no idea the extent of Castle's feelings right now. Every single one of them is still in the dark.

Castle's head droops down again, face in his palms, but then he feels a hand clap onto his shoulder. He looks up. It's not Ryan this time. It's Jim.

"It's not your fault," Kate's father tells him. "You did what you could, and you attended to my daughter's safety, made sure she got the help she needed."

Castle swallows hard at the lump in his throat. It's a kindness, but he still feels like he could have done more. The guy got away. The smug bastard who beat her and sent her to the hospital is on the wind, running loose out there somewhere. He let him get away and he'll never forgive himself for—

He feels Jim's grip on his shoulder turn firm. It's enough to pull his attention back to the older man.

"You were there for her when no one else was, and you took care of her, Rick. For that, I'll be forever grateful."

He's not sure if her father is speaking of just tonight, or in general for the past several years, but hearing those words, he could cry. Kate confided in him a while back, about how his books got her through the darkest of times after her mother's murder, and how his presence in her life the past four years have given her the strength to push through and overcome the gaping hole that was left in her heart when every lead turned cold, into a dead end. She said he was the only one who could ever pull her out of the depths of that rabbit hole when everything just became all-consuming again. He was her light in times of darkness.

Yes, in this moment, hearing these reassuring words come from Kate's father, the floodgates could just open up and run free. But they don't. He doesn't cry. He fights back the surge of emotion with all that he has, and simply gives a short nod of his head at Jim Beckett, because he needs to be that same man who has stood by her side and given her strength to go on. He needs to stay strong for her, and remain that beacon of light while her world swims again in darkness.

Off to the side of him, Ryan and Esposito share smiles, even if they're small, dim at best.

* * *

When the doctor, a petite brunette woman whom appears to be in her late forties, comes out to speak with them some short time later, they finally get updated on how Kate is doing. She suffered a hairline fracture on her skull as a result of a blow to the head, a cracked rib, subluxation of her elbow, multiple lacerations to her back and contusions all over her body. All said, they've found no sign of internal bleeding and she is in stable condition, resting comfortably. They're keeping her under sedation, but the prognosis is good. She's expected to make a full recovery with time and plenty of rest.

A collective sigh of relief pours out of the four men who have been sitting vigil for her in the emergency room. Castle can feel the unshed tears burning in his eyes at the relief of it all.

"Can I see her?" asks Jim, when the doctor finishes speaking.

"Yes, of course. We'll have one of the nurses come take you back in a few."

"Thank you," he says, shaking her hand. She offers him a smile before leaving, and Jim takes a seat back down beside Castle.

"I'm going to put in a call to the station, see if they've gotten anything yet from the sweep of Beckett's apartment," Ryan explains, then excuses himself to step out and make the call.

"Put it on speaker, bro," Esposito calls out, tagging along behind him. He doesn't want to miss a detail. They get a hit on this guy, his partner knows that Javi wants to be right there when they nail the bastard.

Castle and Jim sit in comfortable silence for a few minutes after the boys leave, the former twiddling his thumbs, not really sure what to do. He won't be able to see her yet. He knows that. That's how the rules go with hospitals. Family only, initially anyways. Once she's awake and set up in a room, cleared for visitors, then he'll be allowed in. But he can't bring himself to go home or anywhere else. Not this time.

He can't leave her. He won't.

"So you were with her this evening, before it happened."

Castle's attention turns up at the sound of the older man's voice, but Jim's eyes are staring straight ahead to the rest of the room. It didn't sound like a question, and the wording feels more than just statement of fact. Not accusatory or presumptuous but something...more.

He has to wonder—how much has Kate told her father about him? About _them_, if anything at all?

Does he...does he _know_? Can he see it?

"Yes," Castle replies softly.

Jim shifts in his seat, crossing a leg over his knee as he sits back in his chair.

"She's been different these past few months, since...well, you know."

_Since her mother's case,_ Castle's mind supplies but he says "Since she went back to work," instead. Jim doesn't seem keen on bringing up his wife's murder investigation and Castle's not about to do it himself.

"Whenever I see her or talk to her, she's just so much happier than before. More free."

"She's finally letting herself live," he offers, and Jim nods.

"No doubt you've been instrumental in that."

Castle's throat bobs as he swallows. He's not sure what to say to her father here, not when Kate's lying unconscious in a hospital bed, unable to give him one of those looks that says _'Go ahead'_ or '_Don't you dare_'.

He wants to tell Jim how amazing his daughter is, how fierce and strong and brave, and also how smart, kind and loving. He wants him to know that he'd do anything for her, if only just to see her smile, and how that smile of hers has the ability to brighten up any room and his entire life. Her laughter make his heart soar, and her love for him...it's made him a better man. But mostly he just wants to tell Jim Beckett that the love he has for his daughter, it knows no bounds. He knew she was extraordinary from the moment he first laid eyes on her, and he's fallen a little bit more in love with her each day for the past four years.

He wants to tell him. He really does. And he nearly gets up the nerve to do it before a nurse appears in front of them and begins addressing Kate's father instead.

"Mr. Beckett, she's all set. I can take you back to see her now."

Jim moves to stand, but turns back to Rick Castle, the man he knows without a doubt is head-over-heels in love with his daughter, the man who his daughter herself holds so dear to her heart.

Castle takes the chance for what it is and speaks, a sort of desperation to his voice.

"Will you...when she wakes up, will you tell her I'm here? That I'll come see her as soon as I can?"

"Of course, Rick. Of course."

The two share a look, Castle's heart on his sleeve, his pent up emotions flooding out from the ocean blue of his eyes, and then Jim's stepping forward, reaching out to him, a solid hand to his shoulder again, giving him that same reassuring squeeze.

"Thank you, for everything."

Castle nods emphatically, and then his eyes are stinging again, the tears swimming in his vision. He won't let them fall. He'll stand strong. Kate needs him and he'll be here for her.

"Hang in there, Rick. We'll get this son of a bitch, too."

And with that, Jim Beckett's weary frame turns instead into a pillar of strength in Castle's eyes as he watches the man disappearing behind a swinging door across the room. He thinks, in that moment, maybe it's not just Kate who is the one who has changed over the past few months, but her father, too.

* * *

_For the record, I have no idea what's happening with Johanna's case in the season premiere, so if there's a spoiler in what I've written, it's unintentional. In writing this story, I'm just going with the assumption that something big happens and/or someone pivotal to the case gets caught. And other than the brief mentions during this chapter to it, I'm not touching on the case any further because in this 'verse, it's been three months since then and that case has nothing to do with this one they're chasing now. That said, thank you for sticking with the story. I know you're all anxious to get back to the present and Kate being awake, and we'll get there. It's coming up._

_PS, I love writing Papa Becks. Expect lots more of him, because he is awesome._


	8. Chapter 8

It's close to one in the morning when Lanie Parish finally rushes through the doors of Bellevue's emergency wing. She'd been working a late shift in the morgue doing a consult with Perlmutter on the sudden death of a presumably healthy young man who turned out to have a rare, congenital birth defect. By the time the medical examiner had gotten the chance to check her phone for messages, over an hour had already passed since her ex-boyfriend turned no strings attached lover, Javier Esposito, had left her a brief voicemail. His tone was grave.

_'Lanie...' _he started, the sound of his voice sending a tremor through her body. _'Get over to Bellevue as soon as you can. It's Beckett.' _

No sooner did the message end that she grabbed her personal belongings and rushed out into the night.

She's not even sorry for the way she may have exploded at a handful of pedestrians out on the sidewalk as she made the one mile trek on foot down 1st Avenue from the OCME to Bellevue. She was late enough coming to her friend's side in her time of need as it already was. Like hell was she going to let these idiots loitering around on the street in the middle of the night make her short trip even longer.

Not a single person in the waiting room doesn't jolt in his or her seat and turn their attention toward the entrance when Lanie bursts into the room shouting out Javier's name. He stands up immediately and raises a hand to catch her attention before gesturing her over to where he's been sitting with Ryan and Castle for however long now. The wait feels perpetual at this point.

"What the hell happened?" she asks the three men frantically as she moves toward them.

Castle just stares like a deer caught in headlights before his head droops down, avoiding eye contact with the woman. He can't go through the details yet again. He just gave his statement to a pair of uniforms that showed up fifteen minutes ago. All he can really say is that he left to get burgers and when he came back...

Ugh. If he keeps having to think about it, keeps having to relive it in his detailed writer's mind, about how she looked when he found her and how unresponsive she was...

No. Stop, Rick. Just stop thinking. Let the boys handle it.

"Some bastard busted into her apartment, beat the hell out of her," Esposito explains, little restraint left in the detective when it comes to curbing his anger and frustration over the entire situation.

Castle cringes at the word choice. It's not doing him a whole lot of good listening to anyone else describe the situation either, apparently.

"What?" Lanie gasps in disbelief.

Before she gets the chance to ask if her best friend is okay and what all transpired tonight, the boys start filling in the answers for her, one detail after another, telling her everything they know so far about her condition and the attack.

"Castle got to her before he could do too much damage," Ryan says with a hint of pride for their honorary partner, giving the man a smile, but Castle himself can't return it. He looks down at his hands, his knuckles covered in abrasions from the fight he'd engaged in with the guy, but he's feeling anything but accomplished right now when his partner is still lying in a bed battered and unconscious somewhere past those doors just beyond them.

Esposito lets out a harsh breath, knowing Lanie's not going to like the next part. "The guy's still in the wind though."

It makes Castle deflate even more into his silent state, even despite the look he gets from Ryan that he's sure is the detective's way of trying to tell him that it's not his fault. Even so, he still feels useless. Had he not frozen up, they'd have gotten the guy. The monster might even be in a bed in this hospital right now, too, recovering from a gunshot wound.

Or down at the morgue, with a bullet in his brain. If only, if only...

Ryan continues on with what he found out from his call to the station some time earlier.

"There we no witnesses inside her building and no one seems to have heard a thing from the canvassing so far. No traffic cams in the vicinity of Beckett's building managed to pick him up, either. ESU still hasn't finished their sweep yet though, and they're going over the place with a fine tooth comb right now. They're bound to find something. Based on her injuries and the mess her room is in, she fought like hell."

"Wouldn't expect any less from our girl. How's she doing now?" Lanie asks finally, not at all content with the rundown and fishing for at least some form of good news in all of this.

"Last we heard, stable but still out of it. I think the doctors said they were going to keep her under for now."

The ME nods in understanding, and Castle gets the vibe that maybe their doctor friend is running through a probable treatment plan in her head, guessing at what the doctors here are doing for Beckett at the moment.

"Have they let you in to see her yet?" she asks, her eyes specifically focusing on Castle though the question went out to all three of them. Castle and the boys all shake their heads in unison.

"Her dad's back there with her right now," Esposito says.

Ryan follows with, "They probably won't let any visitors back until she's settled into a room in the morning, right?"

Castle takes note of Ryan's use of the word "visitors". Because if he and Javi wanted to go back there and see Beckett, all it'd probably take is a flash of their badges and they'd both be in there. But they won't do it, he knows, not when Castle has no such way to bypass hospital protocol on his own. They could try to drag him in with them anyways but security will be tight on her, just as it was the last time she was hospitalized. It's not a homicide case, and not their case to handle anyway, so who knows if they'd get clearance anyways. The whole reason visitors are barred is to make sure she's secure in a room before anyone is allowed back to go see her.

He doesn't have a badge. He's not family. He's not even her significant other in the eyes of the public. To everyone else in this hospital, he's simply a regular visitor, a friend who has no priority seeing her over even just a random stranger.

He's going to have to wait all night, just like anybody else would. And that hurts.

"Like hell they won't," Lanie growls suddenly, the intensity of her voice knocking Castle out of his thoughts. Then she's turning on her heel, heading back towards the front desk and the nurse seated behind it.

"What's she doing?" Ryan asks, to no one in particular.

"If I know Lanie, probably muscling her way inside," his partner responds, watching the ME charge across the room.

In no time at all, Lanie's locked in conversation with some nurses at the front desk, barking out what sounds like Beckett's name and some sort of a demand that they can't hear clearly enough from the other side of the room, but her body language screams her intent. Next thing they know, Lanie's throwing a satisfied look in their direction before pulling out her medical identification from the pocket of her scrubs, letting it dangle in the air over her shoulder as she passes a man in scrubs that opens the door for her and lets her inside.

"Damn," Esposito says.

"Nice abuse of power," Ryan adds.

What Castle wouldn't give to be able to do the exact same thing.

* * *

No stranger to Bellevue hospital, Lanie gets the information she needs and heads in the right direction to her friend in no time at all. She learns that Kate was officially admitted and moved to another temporary room outside of the ER twenty minutes prior to her arrival. They've got her situated in a quiet area at the end of a long hall, a location to provide privacy for a recuperating police detective during an on-going case, and also protection as well. She has to identify herself to two uniforms standing out in the hallway before they let her inside.

Jim greets her when he hears her come in.

"Hey. Lanie."

Kate's father is sitting in a chair beside her bed, his hand resting over his daughter's as she sleeps. Lanie winces when her eyes travel up her friend's body and to her face. The swelling above her eye is far more prominent now compared to the description of her injuries that she'd gotten from Ryan and Esposito, based on Castle's account and the doctor's initial comments. Even with all the information given to her beforehand, it still wasn't enough to prepare her for seeing Kate like this. The bullet to her heart was much kinder than this brutality.

"Hey. Got here as soon as I could. I just talked to the boys. How is she?"

Lanie circles around to the other side of the bed, runs a hand through Kate's hair as Jim lets out a sigh.

"Not much change," he admits sadly. "They changed her medication a little while ago, so she may come out of it any time now, though. She's squeezed my hand a couple of times in the past few minutes as I've been talking to her. Not sure if it's just her dreaming or a reaction to anything I've said."

"It's possible. All depends on what they gave her and how much."

"She's got so many different injuries, I'm sure they started her off on the high end, just to make sure she was comfortable."

Lanie nods, hums in agreement. Then out of the corner of her eye, she catches movement beneath the white sheets on the hospital bed.

"Oh, look! She just moved!" Lanie shouts, pointing down at her friend's hand underneath the sheet. "Kate!"

"Katie?" Jim calls out softly.

Kate stirs slightly, then her whole body attempts to shift until her face twists in a pained expression. Her limbs go slack again, only her fingers curling into the mattress, a light grip that is shaky at best.

"Katie, sweetheart. Are you awake? Can you hear me?"

"I'm going to go call a nurse. Keep talking to her, see if she responds."

Jim nods and then Lanie makes her way out of the room, leaving him alone with his daughter.

"Katie, if you can hear me, squeeze my hand, sweetheart. Let me know if you're awake."

He gives a little squeeze of his own hand on hers but she doesn't seem to register it, nor does she respond to him, just keeps gritting her teeth and digging her nails into the mattress.

Lanie slips back in a few minutes later. "The nurse is paging Dr. Collins right now."

"Good."

"How's our girl doing?"

"Still not responsive. But she's..." he trails off, indicating at her fingers with a wave of his free hand.

"Kate, are you awake, honey?" Lanie asks, sidling up along the other end of the bed. "Kate, open your eyes for me."

The frown lines deepen on Kate's countenance as her eyes flutter lightly, but then she's squinting them back shut as her face contorts yet again into a telltale sign of discomfort.

"Damn it, she's in so much pain." Jim looks toward the doorway. "What the hell's taking them so long?"

Kate's eyes start to flutter again, one eye finally cracking open to just a small slit that reveals the forest green of her iris beneath the lid. Slowly, the other eye pries itself open, as though she's working at it, struggling to make her body cooperate despite the pain and her injuries. Her mouth opens, her lips forming into what looks like it may be the start of an attempt at words.

"Kate, talk to me honey. Can you do that?"

A low, strangled noise from deep within her throat is the only sound Lanie gets in response.

Moments later, the RN assigned to Kate arrives in the room, deeply apologetic. "I'm so sorry for the wait, it's a zoo in here tonight. Has she been responsive?"

"Very little," Jim says.

Then Kate shocks the hell out of them and finally manages a word.

"...hurts."

"Oh, Kate."

"I know sweetheart, I know it hurts. We're getting you help."

The nurse steps around Jim to get to Kate's IV bag and pulls a syringe out of the pocket of her scrubs.

"Dr. Collins is on the way, but she gave me the go ahead to give her something for the pain."

"Hear that?" Jim says gently to her. "The doctors are giving you something for the pain so just hang on, Katie. Hang on."

Jim's hand clamps onto his daughters as she strains to grip at the sheets, the mattress, whatever her fingers can sink into. Her teeth grind at each other as she tries to fight through the pain overwhelming her body.

A new voice enters the room moments later, one that Jim recognizes from earlier. The doctor from the emergency room who worked on Kate upon her arrival. The woman is brief with her greeting of Jim and Lanie upon entering the room, just a slight nod of her head and a question to the nurse on her condition before she heads straight for Kate. The detective is still writhing on the bed, though not nearly as bad as before.

The pain medication is finally kicking in, thank God.

"Detective Beckett, my name is Dr. Collins. Can you tell me what happened tonight? Who did this to you?"

Kate jerks, a hand suddenly flying out to the side and scraping at the bedsheets.

A single syllable escapes from her mouth. "Cas..."

"What's that sweetheart? What did you say?" Jim asks, trying to catch her hand as it fumbles around.

"Cas..tle...Castle..." she cries in a tone of desperation, her voice weak and strained as she tries to force her body into trying to get up, to move.

"Castle? Did she just say 'Castle'?" Lanie asks, darting a quick look over at her friend's father. He catches her eyes for a moment but then Kate's at it again.

"...Cas..tle. Castle."

Lanie sets a hand over Kate's bicep, her fingers curling around her arm, trying to be a reassuring presence for her.

"Castle's not here, honey," she explains softly.

"It's Dad," Jim says from the other side of her, hand gripping tightly onto his daughter's again. "Dad and Lanie. You have to calm down. Relax, sweetheart, just relax."

"Castle. Hurts."

Dr. Collins finally pipes back up after watching and listening to the whole exchange.

"You mean to tell me that the man who brought her in did this to her? Rick Castle?"

Jim and Lanie exchange looks of confusion and horror both.

"No, that can't be—" Jim starts, but his daughter cuts him off before he can finish his thought.

"Cas..._Ri..ck_." Her weak voice breaks on the last syllable, all of her strength instead seeming to channel into pure adrenaline for moving her body. She's surging up, a horrific cry of pain accompanying her movements that makes her father and best friend sick to hear the sound, but she's seemingly undaunted by her predicament. She keeps moving, keeps trying to shift her legs, feel with her hands for what, they can't be sure.

"Kate, you have to calm down. Be still," Lanie pleads with her.

"Castle...Castle..." she cries out again, hand clamping onto Lanie's arm as the other woman tries to hold her back down.

"Katie, please. Relax. Just relax."

Finally, Dr. Collins takes a stand, having seen enough. "I'm sorry, Mr. Beckett," she says, then motions with her hand to the nurse beside her, "but we're going to have to sedate her."

Jim looks over at her, then to Lanie, who gives a nod of her head. There's really no other option. She's too frantic and stressed out. She'll just end up injuring herself further if this keeps up. He consents with a resigned nod of his head to the doctor.

He holds onto his daughter's hand, his thumb running soothing circles into her skin as the medication takes effect.

"I'm sorry, Katie," he whispers to her, pressing his lips to the crown of her head as her unfocused eyes slowly slide shut against her will, her hand clenching his tightly one more time before it inevitable goes slack in his grip.

A fighter till the end, as always.

* * *

What transpires next goes by almost in a blur to Jim, as his daughter's best friend and the physician attending to her care suddenly become embroiled in a heated debate over the words Kate managed to give them before they put her back under sedation.

"That's bullshit!" Lanie swears, nearly up in the other woman's face as two nurses try to defuse the situation only to have their pleas fall on deaf ears.

"Dr. Parish—"

"No, you know just as well as I do that an injured patient can be disoriented as hell when they're in this kind of physical condition! Look at her!" Lanie's hand flies out at her side, her index finger pointing sharply at the still body of her friend.

"If Mr. Castle is innocent then the evidence should stand to prove that, right?" the other doctor tries to reason. "Until then, my hands are tied by hospital policy. I'm sorry. I have no choice, given what we heard. It needs to be followed up on, regardless of your personal feelings and beliefs on the matter. Now, I'll be back in to check on her in a couple of hours. Please don't hesitate to call a nurse if anything changes."

"Damn it, will you just—" Lanie moves to follow her as she exits the room but Jim's steady hand at her wrist stays her.

"Lanie...Nothing you say will dissuade her at this point."

The ME's head drops in frustration, defeat. "This is...it's wrong, Jim. All of this is just wrong."

"I know," Jim breathes, and turns to look at his sleeping daughter, completely unaware of the quickly escalating situation unfolding all around her. If she only knew how much worse is was about to get.

"Come on, she'll be out for a while. We'd best go tell the others."

Lanie glances to her friend for a beat before the heel of her hand finds her forehead. She's so upset. For her. For _them_.

"This is going to destroy, Castle," she laments. "Kate, too, once she's coherent."

Jim stands, takes a deep breath and a long exhale to compose himself.

"All the more reason to tell Rick before someone else does."

* * *

_**I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry! **__This was supposed to be out a week ago and I kept procrastinating on editing it, so extra long chapter as my way of apology. I'd like to note that I know very little about actual hospital protocols on this sort of thing and the legal aspects surrounding it, and therefore I'm trying to stay away from specifics case-wise so as to not screw it up too badly, but if I've gotten something inaccurate (or eventually shoot myself in the foot by writing something unrealistic)...just um...let me know? Or go with it, please?  
_

_PS: Castle is back tomorrow! I am hoping for a wealth of inspiration from the first episode and am so excited for it!_


	9. Chapter 9

On their walk back to the emergency wing where they had left Castle, Ryan, and Esposito in the lobby, Lanie and Jim still have trouble wrapping their heads around the events that just unfolded before their eyes minutes ago with Kate. She was in excruciating pain, that much was certain. They could see it in her face, hear it in her voice, but the desperation laced in the words coming out of her and the way she was fighting to get up from the bed had left them both reeling. What she was saying, when she said it, and how the medical staff was now interpreting it...

"She can't possibly have meant it the way it came out when they asked her who hurt her."

Castle? Hurting Kate?

No. There's not even a glimmer of a chance at that possibility, not from everything she's witnessed between the pair over the past four years. He's put his life on the line to save hers, and vice versa. She knows how crazy Kate is about Castle, and she doesn't even have to hear a love confession from the man to know that the feelings are mutual between those two.

She's seen it since the beginning, watched the attraction between them bud at first meeting and slowly blossom into what it's become four years later. Kate once before had called what she had with Castle a friendship, but her bond with the man is so obviously more than that to Lanie's eyes, and has been for quite some time. Since May, Lanie's noticed that Kate and Castle have been even closer. So much more than ever before. They won't admit to anything, of course, but something's been different. She's seen it, the subtle changes. Hard to miss it when they went from such a strained working relationship to working side-by-side again as if nothing had ever been wrong in the first place, as if it's never been better.

When she first arrived to Bellevue this evening, she was met with a broken man sitting in the ER lobby, but it was most definitely not for any reasons that would be related to him physically harming her best friend. Castle was shaken and guilt-ridden, sure, but for being unable to _prevent _her from being hurt, not because he hurt her himself. She's sure of that.

"I don't presume to know him nearly as well as you all do but I can't believe he would do anything to hurt my daughter," Jim Beckett adds after a moment, breaking the ME's thoughts. "I know from Katie that Rick Castle is many things, but from what I've seen firsthand, at the top of that list is how much he's in love with her."

Lanie turns to Kate's father with a dim smile.

"He's not exactly very good at hiding it, is he?" she asks rhetorically.

Jim gives a nod of his head, returns the smile.

"We better hurry."

* * *

They return to the lobby just in time to catch two uniforms squaring off against Ryan and Esposito, with Castle standing thunderstruck from behind them.

"Shit," Lanie curses. "We're too late."

"You guys think Castle did this? Are you crazy?" Ryan's shouting incredulously.

"You better put those cuffs away rookie if you know what's good for you." Esposito warns the other uniform.

Castle bounces on the balls of his feet to get a better view over them when he hears Lanie call out and then he sees her and Kate's father approaching with hurried steps. He quickly sidesteps the men in front of him and bounds down the hall, meeting them halfway. The uniforms shout after him but Esposito and Ryan hold their ground, keeping them at bay.

"Oh God, you're both here," Castle says in a panic, his eyes flitting between the two of them with worry. "She's okay isn't she? She has to be okay."

"Easy, Rick. She is. She's okay," Jim assures him, reaching his hand out to steady the man before he topples over. "She'll be fine. Just resting now."

Castle lets out a deep sigh of relief and nearly bends halfway over with the intensity of it. When he finally catches his breath, he asks, "Is she awake?"

Lanie and Jim both cringe at the question.

"She _was _awake," Lanie informs, and the past tense is not lost on him.

"Was," Castle repeats. "But she's not now?"

"She's in an incredible amount of pain, Rick, as you can imagine," Jim says. "But I think she was asking for you before they put her back under sedation."

"Oh, God." Castle's voice comes out broken again, filled with emotion. "Kate."

Across the room, Ryan and Esposito continue their dispute with the uniforms who have arrived to collect Castle as a person of interest in Beckett's assault. The boys take turns trading barbs and questioning the other cops' police training and investigative skills. Why would they come here to take Castle in for more questioning when they could be out there helping the rest of the team on this investigation find their missing suspect?

"Don't you have better things to do? Like go catch the bastard who did this to her in the first place?" Esposito barks out, venom laced with his voice.

"That's what I've been trying to tell you," the uniform says breathlessly in response, then points over to Castle. "Detective Beckett named him as her assailant."

"Beckett named...what?" Esposito balks. Ryan startles from beside him, mouth agape.

"I'm sorry," the other cop explains, a little hesitantly after he sees the shift in Esposito's posture. "Really, I'm sorry, Detectives, but an orders an order. We have to take Mr. Castle in."

"You said Beckett named _him_?" Esposito asks again for clarification, pointing, unable to believe his ears.

"That's right. There was a witness and everything."

.At that, Esposito's whirling around and staring toward Castle at a short distance away.

Ryan takes note of his partner's change in demeanor and speaks up quickly, trying to be a voice of reason. "No, there has to be a mistake. Castle fought with the guy who attacked her. He didn't do this to her. He was trying to save her." He looks to Esposito, meets his eyes before finishing with, "He's her partner. He's one of us."

But Esposito is unfazed by the sentiment, especially given how his own "partner" betrayed them just three months ago. It's still been rough waters between them, their friendship strained at best, with Beckett incessantly trying to get them to put the past behind them.

He can't handle another betrayal, especially not against Beckett.

Without putting much thought into his actions, Esposito stalks back toward Castle, blood boiling, and Ryan panics, chasing after his partner. The uniforms follow from a safe distance behind.

"Castle!" Esposito calls out from a few paces away and Castle turns sharply at the angry tone of his voice. His throat bobs when he sees the glare staring him down from the other man.

"Javi!" Ryan yells out, "Wait!"

"They're saying that she said you did this." Esposito jerks his thumb over his shoulder, indicating the cops behind them.

"I...what?" Castle stammers.

"Look me in the eyes and tell me you didn't do it, bro." he seethes.

"Wait, Javi," Lanie says quickly. "Let me explain."

"_Explain_?" Esposito turns cold eyes on her. "So it's true? You heard her say it? That Castle did this to her."

"No. No, no, no. I would...I could _never _hurt her. Not in a million years." Castle shakes his head left and right, waving his shaky hands out in front of him for emphasis.

Jim steps in then, "It's true that she said Rick's name, but we're not entirely convinced she was saying it in any context to the questions being asked of her. She was just coming out of unconsciousness and in excruciating pain."

"The only things she said to us were your name and 'hurts'. Over and over again," Lanie explains.

What they meant to be words of comfort and reassurance end up having the complete, polar opposite effect on the writer. He starts panicking again.

"Oh God. What if she...All of the lights were off and it was so dark in the apartment. What if she thinks it was me? What if she thinks I hurt her? Oh God. _Oh God._"

Jim and Ryan both have to grab for Castle as he slumps his back against the wall behind them, his knees buckling under him.

"She could have just been calling for you and reacting to the pain, son," Jim says. "It doesn't mean she thought it was you."

"Castle, we know you would never hurt Beckett," Ryan says reassuringly then looks to his partner. "Right?"

Esposito's eyes stare daggers into Castle's.

"No," Castle starts, "No, you know me. You know how much I care about her. I would never hurt her. Never."

"Hey, I'm sorry. I know this is horrible timing but we really have to take Mr. Castle now."

Both of the other cops give Castle a pitying look, and one of them goes to pull out his handcuffs. Ryan stops him with a hand to the wrist.

"No need for those," the blue-eyed detective says. Then he turns back to Castle. "I'll go with you. Make sure this whole mix-up gets straightened out, okay?"

Castle hesitates, his jaw flexing, and he turns back to Jim and Lanie.

"You'll let me know if there's any change with her? Keep me updated on how she's doing."

"Of course, honey." Lanie tells him.

Jim nods, sets his hand on Castle's shoulder. "You'll be the first to hear, Rick. I promise you."

"Thank you," he tells them, his eyes stinging. Castle glances to Esposito, but the other man has no words for him, just an angry, conflicted scowl. It steals whatever words he'd have wanted to say to him right away from his throat.

"Come on, Castle. Let's get this over with," Ryan says, trying to infuse some cheer back in his voice, make it seem like it's no big deal. Like they'd fix everything and Castle would be right back in no time.

But as he walks with the two other cops and his Irish friend and colleague, Castle knows better. Can feel it in his bones.

Unless she wakes up again, this night is not going to go in his favor.

* * *

His mother and daughter become distraught when he makes his phone call home to tell them he had been arrested. When he explains what for, they're floored and in utter disbelief. Ryan helps further explain what he can when Castle becomes choked up after Alexis gets emotional, wondering how anyone could possibly think her father capable of something so heinous, and against Beckett no less. Martha immediately gets to work on contacting her son's lawyer and Ryan does what he can at the station, but it's still not enough to be able to get Castle out.

With the doctor at Bellevue signing a statement that her patient named Castle as her assailant, and because both Jim and Lanie had to begrudgingly confirm to the police that they heard Castle's name being said by Kate, all roads were presently leading the investigators right to Castle. The abrasions on his hands were consistent with a beating, he was covered in Kate's blood, and so far there was no sign of another suspect. The best Ryan could do was push for Castle's arraignment to be first thing in the morning.

"I'll be back to go with you in the morning. It'll be okay, Castle," Ryan assures him, just before he leaves him down in lockup for the night.

But little did they know that it was only about to get worse for him, when during the early hours of the morning, Ryan gets the call with the news that forensics found evidence of recent sexual activity in Kate Beckett's bedroom, and are sending it in for testing.

* * *

After a nearly sleepless night, Lanie arrives back to Bellevue to visit Kate in the morning. Ryan called to gather them, and she finds Esposito out in the hall waiting for her, Kate's father sitting with his daughter just inside. Jim had never gone home. With Ryan and Esposito's help, they managed to get Jim allowed to stay overnight with her despite hospital policy. With Castle the prime suspect in Beckett's assault until evidence noted otherwise, and Castle in custody at the 12th, no order had been given to station guards outside her room for protection. Castle was insisting his innocence and Ryan was inclined to believe him, even if his partner was still torn on the situation. Despite their rift, they could at least come to one agreement: if there was any chance someone could still be out there and wanting to harm her, then they were going to keep her safe. So, taking shifts, the boys took it upon themselves to stand vigil outside a recuperating Beckett's hospital room all night long.

When Ryan arrives and reveals the news about the new evidence found in her apartment overnight, every one of them is shaken to the core. They sit in silence for a good five minutes at least, not one of the four of them daring to broach the subject yet, or what the possibilities behind it could mean. Lanie has her suspicions, as does Jim, but each of them carries the intense fear of an alternative. If Kate wasn't with Castle, what then?

The only discussion in the end is an agreement that Castle not be told. The detectives on the case forbid it in the first place, but each of them agrees that it may be good for his own sake. He may turn uncooperative with the police should he become hysterical over hearing the news. If it turns out that evidence points to Kate not only being beaten by her assailant, but also...

No. Having Castle become even more distraught would not help his case right now. They need him level-headed, calm.

Esposito, the one still swimming in his own doubts and over who and what to believe, stands at the side of Beckett's bed. He had startled enough at her appearance when he first saw her this morning. At night, the bruising hadn't completely set in yet. Over the years, he's seen Beckett at her worst in many instances; after her apartment exploded, when she and Castle were nearly frozen alive in a freezer, and when she was pale as a ghost after being shot. But he's never seen her so battered. And now, knowing what was found and seeing her like this again, his fist clenches, angry.

"She called out in her sleep for Rick again earlier. Dreaming, I think," Jim informs them. Then he looks to the Hispanic detective in specific. "I really think she just wants him here with her."

Lanie runs her hand through her friend's hair, brushing back the strands from her forehead. Kate has a decent sized knot above her left eye now and plenty of deep purple bruising on her limbs. Lanie can't fathom Rick Castle of all people being responsible for this. It's just impossible. She knows Kate, and she knows Castle. No matter what anyone says, she refuses to believe it.

Ryan's phone rings then, and after a quick glance to the caller ID, he excuses himself out into the hallway to answer it.

"They were fighting all day at the precinct," Esposito speaks up suddenly after Ryan's out of earshot. "Ryan and I walked in on him yelling at her in the break room and then he just stormed off pissed afterward. Left her there the rest of the day."

"What are you trying to say, Javi?" Lanie asks. "That you think this is the result of some argument they had? That he followed her home and they duked it out? Are you even hearing yourself right now?"

"I just don't know, Lanie!" he grits out in frustration. "It's...with everything they're saying, everything they've found, how can I look at it all and not see the possibilities? She didn't have a shred of clothing on when the medics picked her up and Castle never mentioned a word of that to any of us."

"Is it so farfetched that they'd have been together? Think about it. They've been dancing around each other for years, Javi. It's only been a matter of time. Kate's been gearing up to tell him how she feels for months now."

"Then why didn't Castle say anything? If they're together, why not say so? Why'd he leave out such important details? He said nothing. Nothing at all. How am I supposed to look at him like he's innocent when he's hiding things like he's guilty?"

There's a light rap on the door, and the three of them turn to find Ryan looking frazzled.

"What is it?" Jim asks him, gesturing him inside with a hand.

"Test results are in," he begins tentatively, his eyes not focusing on any of the other people in the room.

"And?" Esposito presses.

"It's Castle. The DNA is a match to Castle's."

"Oh, thank God." Lanie breathes out in relief, Jim's reaction a close mirror to her own. She reaches down to grab Kate's hand and gives it a little squeeze, smiling at her.

Esposito, on the other hand, starts for the door.

"Where are you going?" Ryan asks.

"Something I need to do," he says quietly, brushing past him.

"Javi, you can't jump to conclusions," his partner tries to reason, following after him.

"Javier, don't do anything stupid!" Lanie calls out, but he ignores her. She moves to get up and chase after him along with Ryan but Jim stops her.

"Can you stay with her, Lanie? Just in case she wakes up? I'd like a few words with Rick myself so we can get to the bottom of this."

Lanie reluctantly agrees and watches him go before returning back to Kate's side.

"Damn, girl. You see how fierce all the men in your life get when it comes to you?"

Kate, of course, says nothing. Just continues breathing softly in her medically induced slumber.

"Just wish you could tell me what really went on last night. You know I'm gonna want details later, right? Keeping me in the dark like this about Writer Boy...We're gonna have some words, Kate Beckett. You better believe it."

Lanie sets her hand over her friend's, gives it a light squeeze.

"Wake up soon, honey. He needs you now more than ever."

* * *

_So, all of Beckett's boys are going to be having some words together next chapter._ _Try not to hold the swirling doubts against Javi. He's just so angry and fiercely protective of Kate that he can't see straight right now. We all know Castle wouldn't harm a hair on her head :) Especially as evidenced by that amazing season premiere *squee_*_ They are so, so sweet together. It's like fanfic come to life._


	10. Chapter 10

Castle wakes in his cell that morning with a crick in his neck, the muscles of his upper body aching and throbbing from a night spent uncomfortably trying to sleep on the cold, thin sheets of his tiny cot of a bed. Ryan had managed to pull some strings when they arrived and got him held separately from the rest of the thugs down in holding, fearing for the safety of a man of his stature. It didn't take long for word to spread around that millionaire novelist Richard Castle had been arrested, and for assaulting a female cop no less, and it unnerved the both of them as they walked the halls early in the morning, listening to the other imprisoned men shouting and calling out to him with thinly veiled threats and suggestive remarks. If he had been tossed into a cell with anyone else down there, there was no doubt in Ryan's mind that Castle wouldn't be coming back out unscathed. For his own safety, and both of their peace of mind, Castle was led down a corridor to a solitary room meant to hold the most dangerous of arrested criminals before their arraignment, or those at risk of harming themselves whilst in custody.

It took him hours to fall asleep in the small, dank room with it's white walls and musty odor that rivaled even the worst smelling days on the homicide floor. Thoughts of Kate, and the events of the night, plagued his mind all night long and only added to the already present physical discomfort he was feeling from his surroundings, and the soreness of his body from his fight with Kate's masked assailant. Each time he was close to dozing off at last, his head tilting and eyes falling shut, his body would jolt back awake with the slightest of noises, or from a single thought crossing his mind. If only he had been able to stay with the homicide division, the unit of the 12th that had become his home away from home, instead of two floors down with unfamiliar surroundings and even more unfamiliar people in charge of his care...

He supposes he should be thanking the universe though, because he realizes that had he been locked up in homicide, it would have been because he found Kate dead, not alive. He'd have been arrested for murder then, not whatever they were charging him with now. Domestic violence? Assaulting a police officer? He can't even remember what they'd said to him now. Part of the night feels like a blur.

But the thought of Kate coming so close again to death, and in his absence from her, makes him shudder, and almost weep. The fact that she's beaten, but still alive, pulls forth bittersweet, but grateful tears. But he won't shed them. Not now.

He's well aware of the evidence they're likely piling against him now; was running the possibilities through his mind all night long of what they might find, if no trace of the other guy was to be seen. Sure, he'd gone to Remy's to grab them food, but that wouldn't rule him out as a suspect. If it were him and Kate figuring out a timeline of the crime here, even they would have to look at the possibility of someone having ample enough time to come back and commit the act before calling 911. His alibi was worthless without Kate to corroborate it, thin on it's own at best.

If they weren't able to find any traces of her attacker in her home, naturally everything would fall back on him. In the past three months, he's made himself at home in her apartment, so they'd find traces of him everywhere. They've spent nights curled up on the sofa together, watching the television shows he's programmed into her DVR, or the occasional Netflix movie. They've cooked and eaten meals together in her kitchen. On more than one occasion, she's surprised him with a candle-lit bath for them to wind down in at evening's end, and the left side of her bed has become _his _side of the bed; she always curls up with _his _pillow on the days he leaves early in the morning so that he can make it home before Alexis or his mother notices him gone.

No matter how he looks at it, it's either going to look really good, or really bad for him, depending on what they find of him and where. But telling the cops that they're together, and having Gates inevitably find out? It could destroy their partnership, possibly even result in Kate losing her job. She about had a heart attack the last time they almost got found out. Even in a situation like this, he doesn't want to make it worse for her.

...but will he even have a choice in the end? If there was ever a time for their friends and family to figure out that they were seeing each other, this would be it.

God, he wishes he knew what to do. It's either throw himself, or the both of them under the bus, and Kate's already been mangled enough physically last night.

Kate.

He didn't even get to see her before they led him away and told him his rights. Didn't get to hold her hand, run his fingers through her hair, or brush his lips across her cheek. Nothing. Not a damn thing. He's been stuck in this cold, miserable confinement, unable to find out what's going on outside.

He looks down to his wrist instinctively, not remembering that he was stripped of his watch upon booking. A slight tan line on his skin stares back at him in the absence of his Rolex. He hasn't the slightest idea what time it is now, but he can tell it's still early if only from how exhausted he feels. They hadn't gotten him settled until at least an hour after he was brought in, and he doubts he even passed out until close to two or three hours after that.

As if on cue, he hears the sound of a closed fist hammering on the outside of his cell door, followed by the gruff voice of an officer he doesn't recognize.

"Castle," the cop says upon opening the door, and the writer bolts upright into a standing position.

"Got someone to see you."

"Who?" he replies, despite already lunging for the door. The other man holds his hand up to stop him before he can exit the room, lifting up a pair of handcuffs from his belt. Castle lets out a ragged breath.

Right. He's still in custody.

"Sorry, man. Rules are rules," the officer tells him. Richards, his nameplate says. He'd find it funny, were he not feeling so completely wretched.

Richards cuffs him with a pitying look. Obviously everyone working in the 12th Precinct knows the relationship between Castle and the NYPD, even if they haven't personally crossed paths with him before. Some are friendly, some not so much. The detectives questioning him last night weren't among his fanbase, that's for sure. Then again, he and Beckett have railed against plenty of innocent men and women in their own line of work before. It's just how the job goes. Everyone looks like a killer to them, just as everyone must look like a scumbag who'd snap and beat the hell out of a woman to these cops. Even Rick Castle and Kate Beckett aren't exempt, regardless of their notoriety and perhaps, at times, mismatched but impeccable case closure rate.

They walk along a corridor that Castle vaguely remembers, or maybe it just looks so similar to homicide's floor, just with different decor, before Richards leads him into a cage built almost exactly like the ones up in homicide. His own personal holding cell. _Fantastic_, he thinks sarcastically.

"Must have been occupied last night, huh? Since you guys threw me in solitary like the crazies instead." Castle tries for humor but it falls flat. Richards doesn't bother answering.

"Guys'll be in in just a few. "

"Guys?" he asks, as Richards turns to walk away.

"Sit tight, Castle," the cop answers instead. It doesn't make him feel any better about it. He has to wonder if Richards is a fan, or just doesn't plain care one way or the other.

"Long day ahead of you."

* * *

"Javi, will you just—"

"You tell me to calm down one more time, Kevin, and I swear it'll be _your _face connecting with my fist, bro."

By some stroke of luck, Ryan manages to make it to the 12th before his partner does in order to head him off. They get as far as announcing their arrival before Ryan leads him down the hallway and tries to get him to cool down before Castle's brought in. It's not working so much, if the threats of physical violence are anything to go on. Ryan feels like they're back to the days after Esposito and Beckett took off after Maddox all alone, and how long it took for them to finally bury the hatchet.

"Look, I know you're upset, and you have every right to be. We all are. All I'm saying is, let him explain. There has to be an explanation that makes it all make sense, right?"

"The guy spins stories for a living. How are we supposed to know fact from fiction? And say he says he's with Beckett...why didn't he tell us? Why would they keep quiet about something like that? We're friends. _Family_. You don't keep that from people you care about!"

Ryan lets out a breath, almost relieved that his partner has turned to that line of questioning.

"You do hear yourself, right? How long did you keep you and Lanie a secret from us? Hell, I didn't even let you guys meet Jenny for months after we started dating," the blue eyed detective placates.

Esposito frowns, opening his mouth to retort but it falls closed again, silent. His furrowed brow gives a little twitch as he thinks it over.

"Let's tell him what they found and give him the chance to explain. We're detectives, man. If he's lying, we'll be able to tell."

He gets a hard look from his partner, but then Javier nods and seems to be satisfied, even if only slightly. He'll take it though. It's something compared to the rage in which he'd left Bellevue in.

* * *

Castle looks up when he hears the two sets of footsteps approaching, and his eyes light up when he sees who's come to see him. He stands up from the bench and quickly steps closer, hands on the bars, grasping on desperately for what, he doesn't quite know.

"Kate." It's the first word out of his mouth. He can't think of anything else in this moment, nothing else he cares about, nothing else that he'd rather know more about, than her right now.

"How is she? How's Kate?"

Ryan goes to answer, but then his partner steps forward, so close to the bars separating himself from the writer that they're breathing the same air.

"Did you force yourself on her?" he asks, and it feels like a punch to the gut to Castle. His blood runs cold. He feels faint, queasy.

What the _hell_ kind of question is _that_?

"Javi," Ryan tries, but his partner goes on.

"Look me in the eye, Castle. Tell me you didn't lay a hand on her without her consent. Tell me that the evidence the lab found linking back to you doesn't mean that—"

"W-what?" Castle stammers, cutting him off. "Evidence? Without her consent? How can you even—"

And then something in the detective snaps, the interrogative side of him coming out to play as if he were in the box with him, with Castle sitting at the other side of the table, all bets off.

"CSU found traces of semen in Beckett's bed and everything's a match to _you_. We saw you fighting yesterday, Castle. All day long you were at each other's throats, and then _this _happens to her_._ So what happened? She turn you down again? You figure this is the last straw? Take it or leave it?"

"Javi, stop it!" Ryan yells at the same time Castle shrieks "That's not what happened!"

"Yeah, bro? Why don't you tell me then? What happened, huh?"

The look in the Hispanic detective's eyes turns wild, his ability to compartmentalize blinding him to the man who's worked beside them these past four years. Javier Esposito doesn't see Castle, the goofy writer who's become not only a friend, but another partner, on the other side of those bars. He sees the fire and burning rage within his very soul, feels the desperation to find out what the hell happened to his friend, his partner, the woman who is like a little sister to him, and who has undeservedly faced so much strife in her young life.

"What made you snap and do the unthinkable? You get tired of following her around with no incentive and she told you to get lost? So, what, you knock her around a bit and figured you'd just take her by force?"

"_NO!_ How many times do I have to tell you?" Castle screams, furious. "I _didn't_ hurt her!"

"Okay, guys, I think we need to just calm down—"

Ryans plea falls on deaf ears.

"What else is there to explain what happened, huh? You're the first one to say there are no coincidences, Castle! She had no clothes on when medics picked her up and you didn't say a word about that to any of us. And now come to find out, your DNA is all over her! _Inside _of her!"

"FUCK, JAVIER. I DIDN'T HURT HER! I LOVE HER, GODDAMNIT!"

"STOP IT, BOTH OF YOU! Her father's standing right here!" Ryan yells over them, and at that, manages to finally pull Esposito off the cage and back towards the wall. Espo shoves Ryan off of him but stays standing there, his breathing fast, heart pounding. Castle slumps back down onto the bench, his face in his hands, as Jim walks over to the three men.

As usual, he's straight to the point.

"There's an explanation for what they found, isn't there, Rick? One you haven't told us."

Castle nods his head, barely lifting his eyes to look at Kate's father.

"Yes."

Jim comes closer to the bars of Castle's imprisonment, grasping onto them.

"How about we hear it? The full truth this time of what happened last night."

Castle lets out a long, shaky breath, and runs his hands through his hair. He's sweating profusely, so riled up and stressed out. He wipes his hand down his shirt, stands tall.

"Truth is, Kate and I...we've been seeing each other. For three months." He looks to Ryan, catches the detective's sad blue eyes staring back at him. "Since the night you saved her from falling off the rooftop of the Rosslyn."

Castle goes on to explain how he and Beckett fought about her pursuing Maddox, leading him to walk away, and that after what happened to her on the roof, after she had turned in her badge and resigned, Beckett came to him that night. He tells them how they reconciled, finally stopped fighting their feelings and started their relationship that night.

"With everything that was going on, we just wanted to keep it between us for a while until everything calmed down, went back to some semblance of normal. Things were so sensitive when she came back to work, and we didn't want our relationship to jeopardize our partnership and her job."

Neither of the boys speak. They look to each other, and it's as though they're both thinking the same thing, going through the same memories of the pair's interactions in the past three months. _How didn't we know? _and _That explains_ this, or _That's probably why_ that.

"The fight yesterday morning...it was so stupid. My daughter, she's going to school at Columbia now, living in the dorms."

Jim nods, following along. "Katie had told me about that."

"Kate had made plans for us to celebrate our three month anniversary. She surprised me about it. We were going to fly out to Los Angeles for the weekend, spend a few days on the beach, just the two of us, no needing to sneak around since we'd be so far away. She'd gotten the tickets already and we were packed to go and everything.

"But Alexis came home unexpectedly the day before yesterday. She said the air conditioning went out in her dorm and that she was having trouble concentrating on her homework in the heat, so she just wanted to come home and do it at the loft. I figured it was no big deal, but then Alexis was spending more time just hanging out downstairs that night, and my mother had said she hadn't seen her studying at all. She didn't come right out and say it, but I realized she was just homesick. Missed her family.

"I told Kate about it and asked if she'd be okay canceling. She was completely understanding and fine with it, of course, until I opened my big mouth when I realized she couldn't get a refund. I offered to reimburse her the cost of the tickets and buy us new ones for another weekend to somewhere more exotic."

Castle pauses, curses himself inwardly for his stupidity, even if Kate's already thoroughly forgiven him for.

"I guess I did it to...to pay her back for the inconvenience." He gives a half smile to Jim, and the older man seems to understand where he's headed before Castle even gets there. He knows his daughter.

"That didn't go over so well with her, and I really should have known better. She thought that I felt like the trip to LA wasn't good enough, too cheap. We both said some hurtful things, and then went to work and continued saying hurtful things throughout the day." He looks over to Ryan and Esposito then. "And that's what you guys saw going on all day."

Ryan gives a nod of understanding while Esposito continues watching Castle with rapt attention.

"We went home separately and I tried texting and calling when I got back to the loft but she never responded to me. After a couple hours, Alexis had gone up to bed so I went over to Kate's apartment. I wanted to fix things. It was our anniversary, after all. I didn't want us to be fighting and it was all my fault. I didn't consider the thought she put into planning our trip and I hurt her feelings with what I said."

He pauses then, not really sure how to proceed on explaining the rest of the night's events to her father and the two men who are like overprotective older brothers to her.

"So...you kissed and made up," Jim offers after a moment with a smile and Castle looks horribly embarrassed when he nods shyly.

"That's why you found my...my DNA...at her apartment. But I swear to you, I didn't hurt her. I only left for ten, fifteen minutes max, to go grab us dinner. We went to Remy's on our first date. I thought she'd appreciate the sentimentality of it."

Jim's eyes soften, Ryan looks sympathetic and Esposito just looks somber.

"I love Kate. I love her with all my heart. She means everything to me, and I would never, ever hurt her. You have to believe me."

"I do, son." Jim says, and reaches his hand inside the cell to grip Castle's shoulder firmly. "I knew it couldn't have been you, especially from the moment she called out for you. She did it again just before I left her earlier. She used to do the same thing when she was recovering from her shooting last year; call out for you in her sleep. She's stubborn as hell when it comes to saying how she feels and what she wants, even when she's absolutely miserable, but the truth always comes out once her guard's down—or impaired by pain meds."

Both men share weak smiles. Hard to laugh, given the circumstances, but they know how she is.

"When you go back, will you...will you tell her I love her? And that I wish I could be there with her."

"Of course, Rick."

The elder man takes his leave and Ryan steps forward. He slips both of his hands through the bars to grasp onto his shoulders.

"I wish you would have told us all of this last night, man."

"I'm sorry, Ryan. I just...the NYPD rules and everything...and most of it I didn't even think about until I was left only to my thoughts this morning in that little room."

"Yeah. I don't agree with you guys keeping it hidden this long from us, but I understand. I do. Listen, we're going to do whatever we have to to find this guy," Ryan assures him. "He won't get away with doing this to Beckett. To both of you. I promise."

Esposito approaches at last, with a firm look and a nod of his head to Ryan. His partner takes his cue with a smile, and leaves ahead of him.

As soon as Ryan is out of earshot, Esposito apologizes.

"Castle. Bro, look...I'm sorry. What I said..."

"Don't," Castle stops him. "I get it. I may have done the same thing in your place."

Esposito looks uncomfortable for a moment at the implications of that and Castle quickly adds, "I mean if it was _your _partner, not if you were sleeping with mine." Okay, that might've been worse to say. "Girlfriend, I mean! If it was your girlfriend. Like Lanie!"

Castle clears his throat and grasps the bars tightly in front of him, fixes Javier Esposito with a pleading look.

"What I mean to say is...I'm glad she has you. You always have her back, and you're protective as hell when it comes to her. Thank you for that."

The detective nods his head affirmatively. Beckett said it herself, after Montgomery's death. They're a family. They may fight, and they may have their differences, but they'll always be bound together by the tightly woven bonds they've forged.

"We'll get you out of there, bro, and that son of a bitch that did this to our girl is going down."

* * *

Back at Bellevue, Lanie startles when her best friend begins to shift in bed, seeming to finally rouse from sedation.

"Kate?" she calls softly to her.

The detective's eyes slowly peel open to the morning light shining through her hospital room's window.

When she opens her mouth to speak, her voice comes out strained, but clear.

"_Lanie?_"

* * *

_I know, I know. I left you hanging for three weeks (Sigh, real life. Why do you plague me so?) and now I leave you on a cliffy like this. It's pure evil, and if I was reading this fic, I'd probably be leaving an angry review or PM. I'm sorry. That said though, I know you're all anxious for Kate to be awake, and awake for good this time. Rest assured, my waking her up this time will not become like the Caskett cockblocking we've been seeing on the show. She's finally awake, and you can imagine what she'll be thinking and feeling once she knows what's been going on while she was out of it._

_On another note, as of a couple episodes ago, my story has taken an AU turn, because apparently Martha knew all along that they were together, and in this fic, no one is in the know yet. Well, _now_ they are. Also, apparently Castle gets accused of murder in the next episode according to the promo? Does that mean I kind of predicted that he'd get thrown behind bars for something this season? lol_


	11. Chapter 11

When she swims back to consciousness, Kate Beckett feels numb to the world around her. Unlike the last time she had opened her eyes and blurrily drank in her immediate environment, this time she does it painlessly; a minor miracle, if nothing else. Her head feels fuzzy, eyelids weighted down, but the pain from before is gone. She feels nothing, really. Nothing at all. It sort of spooks her as she continues to wake, determined to get her focus back on the world. The numbness makes her want to move, get some sensation back and _feel something_, because she knows how messed up she was, can remember every second of the nightmare until she blacked out upon hearing Castle yell out her name...

Oh, Castle.

She can tell her heart is racing, not just from the feel of it pounding in her chest, but by the beeping of the heart rate monitor sounding right along with her rapid pulse.

Heart monitor. Huh. If she can tell what it is, it means she has her hearing back. That's a good sign.

She cranes her head to the noise to take in more of her surroundings, expecting machines, tubes and God only knows what else attached to her, but is met with worried brown eyes staring back at her instead.

"Kate?"

"Lanie?" she replies, voice a little raspy, quieter than usual, but still clear enough. Much to her relief, her vision is clear, too, when she looks upon her friend. Lanie appears as though she hasn't slept a wink in days, her cheerful smile failing to disguise an underlying exhaustion and the worry lines in her forehead.

"Oh, you're awake. Kate, thank God."

Lanie bounces up from her chair, settling down onto the mattress beside her friend, but when she moves, the light from the hallway moves unimpeded right onto Kate's face, making the detective wince against the light, her eyes still trying to adjust.

All in all, her vision is definitely clearer this time, more able to focus. She hopes it's a good sign, for her own sake. She must be mending well, if her recovery since the last time she woke is any indication.

"How do you feel?" the ME asks softly, placing her hand over Kate's forearm, rubbing gently as if to help rouse her a little more. Kate snorts out a breath of air, miffed.

"Like I was drugged," she mutters in response, more than a hint of indignation in her tone. She remembers all too well what happened the last time she was awake, even if everything went by literally in a blur before it all faded to black again.

"So you remember waking up before."

The doctor gets a pointed look for that comment, but continues on unperturbed anyway.

"Sweetie, they didn't have a choice. You were going to injure yourself more if you kept thrashing around."

"I was hurt—"

"You're still hurt."

"—and I didn't know what the hell was going on. You guys didn't have to knock me out."

"Kate."

Eyes still squinting, she waves off the further explanation, instead choosing to focus on the here, the now, and more urgently, the fact that the light in the room is so damn blinding to her.

"Lanie, can you...?" she motions towards the overhead lights with one hand as the other comes up to shield her eyes.

"Of course."

"Hurting my eyes."

"Light sensitivity from the concussion. It'll get better as you heal more."

Lanie stands up and moves to the switch on the wall, dimming the lights, then moves across to the other side over the room to twist the handle on the vertical blinds so that the sunlight doesn't hit directly onto the bed and instead shines off the adjacent wall.

"Better?" she asks, turning back to Kate, who appears to be looking around the room, craning her head around to try and see outside the doorway, the windows into the hall.

"Yeah," she replies quietly, not really paying Lanie much attention. The ME comes back around to her.

"Where's Castle?" Kate asks suddenly, as her friend moves to take her seat again.

Lanie hesitates in her reply, just long enough to set off an alarm in Kate's head. Her heart rate starts to pick up again, the monitor beeping faster and faster from beside her bed.

"Lanie," she pushes.

"Castle's..." Lanie starts, but hesitates again, not sure what or how much to say.

"He's okay, isn't he? Oh god, please tell me he's okay."

The detective shifts toward her friend, head lifting off of her pillow in a panic, but Lanie lifts a hand out towards her to keep her back down, stop her from trying to get up.

"Castle's...he's safe, Kate. He's safe. The boys are with him right now." She hates herself a little bit after she says it. Not a lie, really, but not exactly the truth either.

"Is he here? He's not hurt, too, is he?" Kate asks worriedly, and Lanie can't recall a time she has ever heard her friend sound so desperate and afraid before. Not crying, but her anxiety has her so damn close to it.

"No, no, he's...fine. He's fine," Lanie reassures her quickly, rubbing her arm in comfort but inwardly cringing at the same time. 'Fine' may be debatable under the circumstances. She can't possibly tell her everything that's happened though, not with how worked up she's getting. She'll hear back from the boys first, see how everything went with Castle, and then maybe they can all explain it to her together.

"I heard him come back; Castle. Castle came back, but he was still there when he came back in and...Lanie, you're sure he's not...?"

It breaks the ME's heart seeing her friend like this, and knowing what she knows.

"I'm sure, Kate. Couple of bumps and bruises but he's okay. The boys are...they're all down at the 12th, trying to get some answers about last night."

The wave of relief that washes through Kate doesn't go unnoticed by Lanie, who gazes down her friend with a heavy heart.

No, as much as it pains her, she can't tell her everything. Not yet.

Kate moves to shift in bed so that she can sit up more, but grimaces when she finds her left arm immobile; her dislocated elbow having been splinted and left in a sling. Lanie discreetly gives the nurse call button a press on the remote control attached to the bed before asking, "You in any pain?"

"No," she grumbles, still trying to shift around to get comfortable. "Just...body's heavy. Groggy. Not as cooperative as I'd like."

Lanie lets out a light chuckle at that. "Here, let me help you."

Kate flinches a little when she lifts her left arm and tucks it over her chest as Lanie presses a few buttons and raises the top half of the bed to a better angle. Lanie helps her scoot up the bed more, careful of the other injuries she'd endured to her back and torso. Once she's settled, Lanie gets up and grabs her purse, pulls out her phone.

"So, you remember last night?" Lanie asks tentatively, checking through her phone for messages to see if the boys had responded to her previous inquiries as to what was going on over at the 12th with Castle. Still nothing so far.

"Yeah..." Kate breathes out, moistening her dry lips with a flick of her tongue. She lifts her right hand to her forehead and feels the knot against her fingertips, huffs out a deprecating laugh.

"Bastard got the drop on me," she growls.

"Do you know who it was?"

Kate winces, pinching the bridge of her nose with her thumb and forefinger as she concentrates.

"Guy works for our suspect. In case it wasn't already obvious judging by how they tried to kill me, he's guilty. Need to call Ryan and Esposito and let them know. They're definitely on the run by now. Need to get an APB out, notify TSA—"

"Easy, easy. I'm letting them know now. They can contact who they have to and you can tell them everything you know when they get here."

She pulls up a blank text message addressed to Jim, Ryan and Esposito and quickly types out: _Beckett awake. Remembers everything, asking for Castle. Get back here asap._

A nurse makes her way into the room then, giving Kate a smile when she notices that she's awake.

"Detective Beckett, you're awake! Dr. Collins will be so happy to hear you've woken up."

Lanie scowls, her voice turning venomous at the sound of the other doctor's name as she whirls around and addresses the nurse.

"Get that bitch Collins in here immediately, please. I have urgent information for her regarding Detective Beckett's case."

"Lanie...?" Kate starts, both she and the nurse startled and confused by the sudden and complete 180 her friend's demeanor has turned. But Lanie simply sets her hand on her arm, gives her a gentle squeeze.

"I promise I'll explain everything when the boys get here. Just relax, Kate. Get your rest. Everything is going to be okay now."

* * *

Ryan and Esposito are with Castle at his court hearing, stuck watching helplessly as he's denied bail. His fame, personal connections and money deem him too much of a flight risk to be let free, and the judge overseeing his case is unwillingly to quote, unquote, give special treatment to a celebrity.

It's not until Mayor Weldon, Judge Markway, Ryan and Esposito, and shockingly enough to all of them, Captain Victoria Gates herself, vouch for Castle's character and his partnership with Beckett, that a compromise is made: he'll be placed back in protective custody at the 12th Precinct. If evidence proving Castle's innocence can be found by 5pm, they won't move forward with sending him to Central Booking. Should they fail to present anything refuting otherwise...

Castle doesn't even want to think about what life will be like behind actual bars, trying to wait for Beckett to wake up, hoping beyond hope that she remembers what happened and doesn't think that he would hurt her, do something so vicious to her.

It scares him half to death, the possibility of it all.

Hands shackled in front of him, Castle steps heavily along the hallway of the courthouse, Ryan and Esposito both escorting him outside for transit back to the precinct. They're met with Gates once outside the building, the captain standing off to the side of the boys' brand new red cruiser.

"I hope you two gentlemen have a plan," she says sternly.

"Sir?" Ryan questions.

"You're homicide detectives, not even on Castle and Beckett's case. We might have him in our custody but we are not the ones working this case."

"Captain, with your permission I'd like to request a personal day off. I'm afraid something has come up today and I'll be unable to—"

"Save it, Detective Esposito. You two do what you have to do to find out who actually went after Beckett. If it was related to the case you three were working on, I sure as hell want to know, and I want that bastard in our custody instead of this one."

Both men shift uncomfortably and answer in unison, "Yes, sir."

Castle looks to Gates anxiously, but he can't stop the immense feeling of gratitude swirling inside of him, bubbling up to the surface. For some reason, Gates believes in him despite the evidence. Whatever feelings she may have against him for what she deems character flaws, she isn't convinced of his guilt in this, and he's beyond grateful to have her on his side.

Before Ryan opens the back door for him to get in, Castle holds a hand up to wait, then turns to Gates with a dim smile.

"Thank you, sir," he starts quietly. "If it wasn't for you, I'd be headed for a lot of trouble right now. Well, I'm still in a lot of trouble. But what you said in there, about me working with Beckett..."

She cuts him off before he can finish.

"Mr. Castle, you of all people should know I find you to be a lot of things, but a man capable of brutalizing a woman, much less Detective Beckett, is not one of them."

Gates gives a pause, gestures to Ryan to move, who does as requested and instead gets in the passenger seat as Esposito jumps in on the other side. She pulls the back door open and Castle slides into his seat, staring back up at her, unsure of what to expect next.

"If someone else did this, there will be evidence out there to prove it. Cooperate with the NYPD, tell them everything you know, and don't prove me wrong."

He's proclaimed his innocence so many times in the past several hours that he's sure he'd just sound like a broken record to the captain. So instead he says, "I promise you I won't. And thank you again, for everything."

Gates merely gives a curt nod before shutting the door, sending them on their way.

Esposito barely makes it a block down the street when Ryan lets out a curse to his right. He's going through his phone.

"What is it, bro?"

"Beckett."

Castle jumps in his seat. "What? What happened?"

"Lanie texted us an hour ago. She's awake. Guys, she said she remembers everything."

For the first time in hours, Castle finally feels like he can truly breathe again.

* * *

"Dad, I'm fine. I just don't have an appetite right now, okay? Stop fussing over me."

He's driving her insane. They both are, he and Lanie. Once he arrived, Lanie dragged him right back out the door, much like she did when that doctor came in a little while before that. She barely even got three words in with the woman in charge of her care before they seemed to switch her out with someone else, a doctor who gave her an exam and merely told her that she just needed to rest and that her prognosis was great. She'd need a few weeks of time to recuperate, but she's already on the mend. You're very lucky, they'd told her.

She'd feel relieved, happy even, if it weren't for the bizarre behavior of her best friend and father, who have both been walking on eggshells around her now, dodging her questions and just telling her to get some sleep or eat more of the disgusting food they've given her for breakfast. Everything is soft or liquid in consistency; applesauce, oatmeal, yogurt that she already knocked back just to shut them both up, and some kind of milk that she's pretty sure is lactose-free and tastes like shit.

What bothers her most amongst all the other oddities is that all three of the boys are seemingly off the grid. With no one telling her anything, it's driving her absolutely mad and she's about had it with all of them.

"I just want you to get better, Katie."

"And I just want to know what the hell is going on here. Give me your phone. I'll call Castle myself."

"Kate, you can't."

"Lanie, I don't need you going all doctor mode on me right now, okay? I'm perfectly capable of using a phone."

"That's not—"

"Hey, Boss."

Kate's head turns sharply to the familiar sound of Esposito's voice and a smile comes to her face when she sees him in the doorway with a little grin of his own on his face.

_Finally_, she thinks. Someone who will give her answers.

"Javi," she greets, and smiles even more when Ryan pops in just behind him.

"You look like hell, Beckett."

"Feel like hell. Didn't get enough beauty sleep, I guess," she replies, but there's a happy note to it. Because if they're both here, then that means Castle...

But after the boys both step inside, it quickly becomes apparent to her that Castle isn't with them.

And it scares the shit out of her.

"Where's Castle?"

No one speaks.

She panics.

"Guys, come on. Where's Castle? You were with him, right? Where is he? Why isn't he here with you?"

When both of their faces turn somber and they avoid eye contact with her, when her best friend sets her hand over her shoulder with a tight grip as her father takes hold of her hand, that's when she knows that everything is not okay.

That Castle is not okay.

"Alright guys, will someone tell me what the hell is going on already?" she tries again, but everyone seems reluctant to start first, Ryan and Espo both looking at each other and then to Lanie, though no one says a word.

So she turns to her father.

"Daddy," she pleads, fighting back tears.

"Katie, there's something we need to tell you," her father begins softly, his thumb stroking over the soft skin of her hand. She feels her heart drop.

And once the story begins, it's as if her whole world has come crashing in on itself.

But the tears she sheds aren't of sorrow.

They're of anger.

* * *

_I made the mistake of watching Probable Cause before I completed writing this chapter, and as a result, I found everything that I had written to be total crap. So I rewrote things and continued to keep rewriting things, trying to make it not so crappy. I still think it's crap, actually, and probably unrealistic case-wise, too. I'll never measure up to the "Castle-behind-bars" story that Andrew Marlowe came up with but I'm a mere fanfic writer, not a showrunner. Hopefully you found this to be readable crap, if nothing else._


	12. Chapter 12

Her friends remain stoically silent, the occasional sober expression sneaking out when they don't get it in check quickly enough, as her father begins telling the story of all of what has happened since she's been unconscious. Esposito is up at the wall of the corner of the room, Ryan just off to the side of him near the window, while Lanie and her dad stay in seats at either side of the bed. Surrounded by people she loves, yet she feels hollowed out, scared.

Her heart monitor picks up again, the elevated BPMs sounding with a quick _beep, beep, beep_ staccato.

She gets the gist of it, but is having trouble swallowing down the information. Castle found her and was with her until she got to the hospital. He fought with the man who attacked her, fired her service weapon at him, even. And yet Castle's not here right now because he's still at the 12th. In police custody.

Charged with assaulting her. The other man currently running free in the wind, no one even on his trail until an hour ago.

It takes her a minute to find her voice again, to put words to the thoughts in her head.

"_What the hell_? Dad, he's not...he would never...Castle and I are—"

"I know."

Her father grips her hand tighter, levels her with a look of both empathy and understanding, for her, for Castle. The whole room goes quiet again, but she can see it on all of their faces, through their pained expressions, the sympathy they all feel over this injustice, and judging by Javier's face, maybe a little guilt, too. Even through the silence, their faces scream their agony over the situation.

Castle must have told them, then. He's locked away and must have felt so backed into a corner that he had to spill everything. Because he had no other choice, no other way to save himself. But how? How can that be?

It makes her angry. She doesn't know how this all could have transpired so horribly. All this time she was worried he had been hurt, but this...this is horrific on a whole other level.

Kate swallows hard past the lump in her throat, tries to keep her voice steady and unemotional in spite of the tear currently trickling down her cheek when she rasps out, "How did this happen?"

Her father takes a deep breath, his free hand clenching and relaxing before he brings his balled fist to his mouth, giving a cough to clear his throat. She takes it for what she knows it is; an effort to buy time and gather a few extra seconds of thoughts before beginning.

"The first time you woke up in the ER, you said something, sweetheart, something that alarmed the doctors, and because of that, they notified the detectives in charge of your case."

Detectives in charge of her case?

"_I'm_ the detective in charge of my case."

"Not Brandy's murder, Beckett," Esposito speaks up from the corner of the room, steadfastly rooted to the spot furthest away from her. "_Your_ assault."

"My assault," she repeats quietly, and everyone in the room gives her a collective nodding of their heads.

It doesn't make sense to her, how the cases would be separate. It's the same guy. Cartwright's hired employee did this to her.

...right. But they think Castle did it. No, _thought_ he did it. They know the truth now. But how did they think Castle did it?

Before she can open her mouth to ask for more of an explanation, Ryan seems to read her thoughts. "We didn't know the two cases were related until you told Lanie it was one of Cartwright's thugs."

"I'm sorry, I..." she trails off, head still fuzzy from the meds, trying to comprehend all of this making the world spin. When she looks to him in confusion, still not understanding the 'how' in all of this, he adds the next heavy blow.

"There was no evidence of anyone else in your apartment, Beckett. I don't know why, I don't know how, but no one has found traces of anyone but Castle."

"Okay," she drawls out, nodding to herself, trying to let it all absorb. God, she wishes she had never lost consciousness, that she could have been able to fight the bastard off, avoid this whole mess of a situation altogether. She and Castle both.

But it still doesn't explain to her how in the _hell _Castle wound up pinned for her assault.

"So, it's what I said that did this, right? Something I said got him in trouble?"

"Honey, it's not your fault."

"Just tell me, okay? Please. What...what did I say?"

At this point, she's not even sure she wants to know anymore, feels the tightness in her chest constricting her breathing due to the anxiety of it all, the pain of knowing he's behind bars when he should be right here with her, holding her hand, staying by her side as she recuperates.

She's apparently the only one that can fix this now. She _needs _to know.

She needs them to tell her everything.

"We asked you if you knew who attacked you," Lanie explains cautiously, eyeing her friend carefully at the same time for a reaction. She can see the moment Kate's heart drops for the second time in a matter of minutes.

The detective feels sick at the thought of what's to come next.

She turns to her father, a desperate, pleading look on her face. It's tearing him up inside, she can see it in his eyes how he hurts for her, but he won't sugarcoat anything. He'll tell her the truth.

"You said 'Castle', Katie. You said 'Castle' and you kept repeating his name, over and over again."

It all comes back to her now, her mindset from before. She'd woken up and he was all she could think of through the haze of her injuries, the blurred vision and distorted hearing masking the world around her, leaving her in a shroud of darkness and unknowing. She was calling out to him, reaching out for him, needing to feel his presence. If she couldn't see, couldn't hear, his touch would guide her back. She'd know his hands, the feeling of his fingers, the warmth of his skin caressing hers.

All she wanted to know was that he was there with her, that he was safe.

"It's not your fault, Beckett," Ryan reiterates for emphasis when the room falls quiet again.

_No_, she tells herself inwardly. Started the dominos falling but _not _her fault. Leon Cartwright started this when he had Brandy Palmer murdered, when he sent his goon Coleman after her in her apartment and left her hospitalized after he realized that Kate knew too much, and now Castle has become an innocent victim in all of this, accused of a crime he didn't commit. But there's still so much more to the story. Has to be.

"Lanie, you said Castle fought with him, that guy who came after me. Even with what I said, there'd have to be evidence consistent with attacking me to charge him, so why...?"

She hears a strangled breath come out of Esposito as he steps away from the wall, moves closer towards her. His somber eyes pierce straight down into her soul when he finally dares to look at her. He looks anguished, guilt-ridden.

It terrifies her.

"They did a sweep of your apartment, Beckett. Only evidence that's been found has all linked back to Castle. Fingerprints, DNA, everything. With the fighting at the precinct, the abrasions on his hands, and the _condition_ you were found in, Beckett..."

It hits her then, exactly what Javier is trying to tell her.

"Oh God," she gasps. "You thought that he, that Castle...?"

Bile rises in her throat, the acid burning. She feels nauseous and has to swallow down the sick feeling threatening to overcome her.

"Oh God, no. No, no, no, no." She pushes past the strenuous resistance of her battered body, ignoring the twinges and aches that remain despite the medication being fed to her through the IV drip. She swings her legs out of the bed, her bare feet easily touching the cold linoleum flooring.

"Katie, don't."

"Whoa, Beckett, wait."

"Kate, take it easy. Hang on."

Both Jim and Lanie lunge for her, Lanie getting a hold of her to try and reel her back in, but Kate twists and wrenches her shoulder away from the doctor's grip, biting back a moan of pain as she does so. It takes her a few seconds of breathing to it before she finally finds her balance and stands.

"I need to go over there. I need to get him out of there. I have to..."

"Beckett, we're already working on it," comes Esposito's voice as he quickly crowds in front of her, blocking her path, but she's already grabbing for the IV line in her hand, attempting to rip it out of her skin. She hisses as she succeeds and removes the remaining wires attached to her, the _beep, beep, beep_ in the room turning into a incessant howl. Lanie quickly shuts the machine off to shut it up and Kate's body starts to sway as a wave of dizziness comes over her suddenly. Esposito and Ryan both grab onto her, holding her steady as she rolls through it. The painkillers she's got in her system right now are good, but that doesn't mean the other effects of her condition won't still strike her down. Even so, she battles through it, cringing all the while.

"Guys," she argues, fire in her eyes, authority to her voice even if it's strained and not at all at the full strength they're used to hearing from her. She's physically shaking with anger, furious about Castle, _for _Castle, accused of an unthinkable crime against _her_ based on what? The word of some doctor listening to the pitiful cries of an injured, incoherent patient? Misleading evidence that could easily have been explained away if only they hadn't been hiding their relationship from everyone they know and care about?

"We know, Beckett. Castle told us. He told us everything." The boys are careful with her, keeping her at bay but she continues to struggle and holds her own, running on pure adrenaline.

"Then you know I can't just sit here!" She latches her hands into Esposito's shirt, fingers gripping onto the cotton tightly as she pulls her hands back and then shoves back into his chest. He just stands there and takes it.

"Katie, please." Her father pleads futilely, but she won't have any of it. Lanie must see the determination in her eyes and re-enters the fray from her left, attempting to reason with her.

"Kate, with your statement, they'll be able to get him out of there, okay? He's going to be out in no time. Just lie back down and rest. That's what you need to do right now. Let the boys handle it."

"No. No, I'm going with you." She directs her words back to Ryan and Esposito, who look between each other, sharing glances as if they're silently trying to decide who is going to have to play bad cop and dreading the outlook of it all.

"Paperwork could take hours. I can't just leave him in there, not after all this. Please, Javi. Kevin."

Using their first names is manipulative, she realizes, but she's breaking them down, all of them, can see it in their eyes the way their resolve is wavering. Just a little more. She's going to hurt like hell when the pain meds wear off from all of the fighting with them but...

"So help me, I'll check out of this hospital and take a cab over there by myself if you guys won't take me. They can't keep me here against my will."

And that does it.

"Okay, okay!" Lanie relents first. "But we do this _my _way, Kate Beckett, and you're staying in a wheelchair until we get you settled back in a bed."

"Fine," she huffs, shaking the boys both off of her. They both heave sighs of relief when she drops back down at the edge of the bed, merely looking up at them all expectantly. Lanie runs a hand through her hair, frustrated and clearly not pleased, but feeling like she has no other choice in the matter.

Jim leans in towards Lanie, tries to keep his voice low and enough of a whisper so that his daughter can't hear him when he says, "Lanie, are you sure this is a good idea?"

Kate turns and gives him a look, letting him know he's been caught, but much like his daughter, he doesn't back down either.

"Katie, those men are still out there," he tells her firmly, but anxiously, and her gaze upon him softens once she sees the fear in his eyes. "What if they know you're out and come after you?"

Here all this time she's only been thinking about Castle, has been unconcerned with her own well-being and she didn't even take into consideration that this is the second time in a year that her father has had to see her laid up in a hospital bed due to someone trying to kill her. He might be putting on a brave face in front of all of it right now, but his determination to reach out to her and make her see his point of view stems from that deep-seated fear of losing her.

"I have a police escort and a doctor with me, Dad." She tries a smile for him when she reaches across for his hand. "I'll be fine. I promise."

He takes her hand gingerly in his and she notices quite possibly for the first time just how fragile her father has become. His once strong hands that used to lift her into the air as a child, held her high and spun her around as if she were flying, now quivering and shaking even at rest. The wrinkles and soft, thinning skin, a stark contrast to the slightly tan, smooth surface of her own, now show his age more than ever. She can't help but wonder if the stresses in his life, the tragedies, many concerning her safety as she's chased her mother's murderer in recent years, have aged him more.

He simply nods his head a few times at her words, resigned to everything, so she gives a tug and pulls him to her for a hug. Jim holds her tight.

Lanie and the boys, quietly watching the scene unfold, excuse themselves from the room with a mention of getting a wheelchair and everything else in order so that they can discharge Beckett from Bellevue safely and without incident. Kate can tell Lanie's not happy about it, preferring to keep her laid up in bed instead of transporting her across town to the grimy police precinct, but she promises herself to make it up to them; her dad, her friends. She'll do whatever they ask of her after this. She just wants—needs—Castle to be there, too.

_Soon_, she thinks. _Just wait a little longer for me, Castle._

* * *

Her father turns to her a little while later, Kate lying in bed again with her eyes shut, resting but not asleep, a thought dawning on him.

"Just remembered. I was supposed to deliver a message to you when you woke up. From Rick."

Her eyes shoot open.

"Oh?" He nods, and Kate's eyebrows lift in interest, her eyes widening with anticipation. "I didn't know you went to see him, too."

"I was with Kevin and Javier when they went, shortly before you had woken up. After all of the lab reports came back, we wanted to get down to the truth of everything. Hear it right from his mouth."

"What did he...say?" she hedges wearily. She can only imagine what it must have been like for Castle, being confronted with such things by the men closest to her. It probably tore him even further to pieces inside.

"Wanted me to tell you he loves you." He pauses on a smile, lets his words, Rick's word, sink in a little. "But not before assuring me how much so."

She can feel her cheeks heating up as her father watches her, and she has to look away from him, feeling far too exposed in the moment.

"He's a good man, Katie," Jim offers. "Good for you."

"Dad, I..." She shuts her eyes against the emotion trying to leak out of her, suddenly feeling the need to explain herself. "It's different with him. So different. I've never felt this way about anyone before and I...I just have to be there for him. I want to be, and I know he would do the same for me in the blink of an eye, no matter what it took."

"Hey, you don't see me stopping you now, do you?" he says, holding his hands palms-up for emphasis. "Not that I ever could, once you make up your mind about something."

"I'm sorry," she says honestly.

Jim shakes his head. "Don't be, sweetheart. I might not agree with you rushing over there in your condition, but I understand in some ways. Love makes you do crazy things."

Her eyes widen at his words and she gives a shy nod of her head, saying on a laugh, "Yeah. I guess it does."

As if on cue, Lanie pokes her head back in the room, rapping a knuckle on the open door to get their attention. "Sorry to interrupt, but I've got some stuff for you to sign, Kate, so we can go get you two lovebirds reunited. And let me tell you, the doctors around here are _not _happy with either of us over this little decision right now."

"Yeah, well lucky for us, we won't be around here much longer to suffer the consequences of it then, hmm? Hand it over."

"Someone's eager," Lanie teases, giving her a knowing look as she walks in, flapping the papers around in one hand.

"You have no idea." Kate can't help it. She returns the surprised look that Lanie gives her with a smirk before snatching the papers from her hands and plucking a pen she sees poking out from her friend's coat pocket. She knows Lanie's going to grill her about it later but for now...

She's got someone to bust out of a holding cell down at the 12th Precinct. Someone she's probably going to grapple into a hug once she sees him, latch onto, and never let go again.

* * *

_I am completely blown away by the reviewer response to the last chapter. I started this story in August, way back before I even knew about the existence of Probable Cause coming up on the show, and it did intimidate me a lot. Let me be clear though that I have no intention of abandoning this, so rest assured it will meet its conclusion. I know where I'm headed with it, always have. I'm just a terribly slow writer and procedural stuff is not exactly my forte. Let this chapter serve as my 'thank you' for all of your amazing support and kind words of encouragement. Much anticipated reunion to follow next chapter.  
_


	13. Chapter 13

Lanie brings Kate clothes to wear home from the hospital. With her apartment still taped off as a crime scene and new teams down there checking for additional evidence now that she was able to give them a play-by-play of the previous night's events, Lanie was only able to grab what little she could find of Kate's clothing in the trunk of her new Charger and her gym locker down at the 12th. The black tank top was immediately out of the question as it was too tight-fitting to be gentle enough on the injuries to her back and torso. Fortunately, she'd had a pair of flats in her cruiser ("I don't care how good you think your balance is. You are not wearing heels today, Kate Beckett.") and with the boys and her father all waiting outside her room, on went the shoes, a baggy, oversized NYPD sweatshirt and yoga pants until she'd be able to access her closet at home again.

"I probably have some loungewear stuff at Castle's," Kate mentions offhandedly as Lanie helps her shrug into the hoodie—a somewhat daunting task considering the condition of her arm and all of the tender spots along her shoulders and spine.

"Oh, _now _you're being all open about it."

Kate cringes and hisses when her arm gets caught partway through the sleeve and the snag sends a tremor of pain through her arm. "Well, there's no sense hiding it now, right?" she says on a wince.

"Girl, there was no sense in hiding it from us to begin with."

Lanie helps her stand up from the bed and walks her over to the wheelchair, an arm looped underneath the armpit of her good arm, just in case she were to lose her balance. She doesn't. Once Kate is seated, she stares up at her friend, giving her an annoyed look. They'd already gone through the secret-keeping debacle an hour ago. She was not in the mood for it again.

"I know, I know," Lanie says in response to the glare, and has to bite back a smile because Kate looks ridiculous in the hoodie. She's practically swimming in it because it's so big on her small frame. It's more Castle's size than anything. Maybe it _is _Castle', Lanie thinks then. She never thought to ask before. "You guys wanted to keep it between the two of you at first. I get it. I did the same with Javi. But three months is a long time, Beckett. How long were you planning to keep it to yourselves?"

Kate's face scrunches in thought. She's not really sure, actually. She and Castle hadn't exactly put a timeframe on when they would be okay with telling everyone. It's not as though they'd sat down together and discussed how long was acceptable, nor did they even discuss anything recently about their stance on the whole thing. They were just going with the flow of things, taking each day as it came. Aside from the fighting recently, stemming from miscommunications and hiding their relationship from their family, everything had been golden. They were perfect. Happy.

_And we'll continue to be happy_, she thinks to herself, just as soon as she gets Castle out of this mess.

"I don't know," she replies finally, as Lanie swings back around to grip the handlebars on the wheelchair and turn her around in the direction of the door. It's an honest answer and she can tell from her sideways glance up at Lanie that her friend believes her, trusts her word as truth and not some lame excuse. "But in some ways, I'm sorta glad it's out in the open now. Like a weight has been lifted, you know? Can't say I like how it transpired, though."

"Uh, yeah. Not exactly ideal."

"No. Not at all."

Just before Lanie wheels them out of the room, Kate reaches a hand up and sets it over Lanie's.

"Thank you, Lanie. For all this."

Her friend merely shakes her head dismissively and continues on.

"Let's go get your Writer Boy, huh?"

* * *

Ryan double parks them just outside the entrance to the 12th and Esposito quickly hops out of the car to pull the wheelchair out of the trunk. Lanie gets out after a smile and a squeeze of Kate's forearm, then comes around to the other side of the car to help Espo unfold the wheelchair.

Her father had gone home straight from the hospital, asking her to call him once they get everything with Castle squared away. She'd pulled him to her from inside the back of the boys' cruiser, hugging him and kissing his cheek, and promised she would, but not before telling him not to make plans for Sunday night. It's been ages since they were able to sit down and have a meal together, and now that the secret is out, she feels terrible for having kept it from him, for him having to find out in the way that he did. He's had nothing but fond things to say about the man in her life over the past couple hours now she's really itching to see the two of them interact together with her own eyes for a change. Castle's never had a father figure in his life before, and she can't help but wonder if maybe her own dad might fill that void for him in some way as they progress in this new life shared together.

God, she misses him. It's only been a couple hours for her, having been unconscious for the bulk of their time spent away, and yet knowing what he's been going through without her makes her want to be with him all the more.

The trip across town after saying goodbye to her father had been rough. She practically chewed the thumbnail of her right hand clear down to the quick, so anxious to get over there and growing impatient with how long the trip was taking them. Traffic wasn't too bad, but the car ride still felt like an eternity to her. She's used to driving, not being stuck in the backseat like a perp, caged and confined, unable to get out until someone helps her out of the vehicle. She's certain she could stand and walk on her own, but it's still painful and the pain meds in her system keep making her dizzy and lightheaded. One sharp turn around a corner even had her head spinning. She supposes that's why the warning labels on medications advise against driving or operating machinery. She definitely wouldn't trust herself behind a wheel right now, that's for sure.

She takes solace in the fact that it's a means to an end. Once this trip is through, she won't be quite so anxious anymore, her knee bouncing up and down in the back seat, jittery with nerves and anticipation.

Inside her mind, she's yelling at Lanie and Esposito to hurry up already but then she chides herself for it, tries to muster up some patience as they continue to poke along outside, oblivious.

"Almost there, Beckett. Hang on," comes Ryan's voice from the driver's seat. She looks up at the sound of his voice only to see the back of his head. He must have been watching her through the rearview window, which is where he's looking now, only not focused on her, more focused on the road and making sure no other cars clip them while they're double parked.

"Almost there," she repeats, though it's too quiet for Ryan to hear her. She _is _almost there now, almost able to see those ocean blue eyes staring back at her. She wants to run her fingers through his hair and tell him not to worry, that she's here to get him out now and everything will be okay. She wants to be his hero, as he was for her.

He'd fought the guy and tried to shoot the man who had assaulted her. Her sweet, charming Castle, who otherwise would never hurt a fly.

He must have been terrified for her, much as she had been at the thought of him coming back and getting caught in the middle of the fight. If she hadn't knocked that gun away from Coleman...

The car door opens and breaks her train of thought, and then Esposito is extending his hand inside to her. "Ready to go, Beckett?"

No sense dwelling on the what-if's now. All the matters is they're both safe, and they're going to catch the son of a bitch.

"Ready."

* * *

Castle's lying flat on his back across the bench in holding, eyes closed and just listening to the muffled sounds of the precinct from his location in the depths of the homicide floor. It's become a sort of game to him over the past half hour to pass the time since his mother and Alexis had left to go on home. He listens to the surroundings, tries figure out what he's hearing out there and then makes up a story based on the sounds alone. So far he's come up with scandalous liaisons in a supply closet after he heard the same door creak open and shut in quick succession, and he's heard the unmistakable sound of his espresso machine being temperamental on someone who clearly didn't know how to use it properly. Kind of like Kate sometimes, but he dismissed that thought quickly before he got too choked up over it.

She's fine. The boys dropped him off here first and went over to see her themselves. She's in good hands.

He's a little nervous though, because if she can't corroborate his story...

But she will. She's okay and she will. That's what they assured him when the cage doors closed him in here an hour ago, just before his mother and daughter arrived to pay him a visit. L.T. had helped sneak him in a sandwich that Alexis had brought to leave there for him, for which he was eternally grateful for. She'd written a message for him on the napkins inside the bag that said _Love you, Daddy_ and _Don't worry. You'll be home soon_.

He's not ashamed to admit it made him tear up a bit.

Now as he lies back against the cold, hard bench, he listens as he has been over the past thirty minutes. He thinks he can hear the faint ding of the elevator, the sound of footsteps shuffling out. Nothing unusual. He's heard the same noise quite frequently since he's been in here. But then he hears something peculiar. Something like applause. Cheering.

Very unusual.

When he hears sets of footsteps approaching from down the hall, accompanied by something else he can't place that is also causing him to hear a dull _thump thump_ against the floor, his eyes pop open and he turns his head towards the door to his confines.

And then his heart nearly stops.

"Hey."

Her greeting is quiet, a little shy as she looks at him through the bars of the cage, and he finds himself rooted to his spot, frozen. His brain disbelieving his eyes. Her fingers curl through the open spaces of the bars and she looks up, whispers something. It's only then that he registers that the other three are with her. Of course they are. He heard the footsteps. He just...he's got a bit of a one-track mind when it comes to her. When it comes to-

"Kate?" he calls out, his voice a little strangled from the shock of seeing her there.

She nods her head and smiles at him. She's bruised and banged up but she's beautiful. God is she beautiful. She's alive and she's the most perfect creature he's ever laid eyes on.

"We'll give you two a minute," says someone. He can't even tell if it was Ryan or Esposito that said it. He's pretty sure it wasn't Lanie, and he knows it wasn't Kate because she's _here _and she's beautiful, and his eyes are locked on hers. She's giving him that smile he loves so much, and then the holding door is creaking open and the bars are no longer separating them and he pries himself off the bench, drops to the floor on his knees, scrambling to meet her as someone helps wheel her inside. They all step away but the door remains open.

"Kate. Kate, Kate..."

"Shhh, I know. I know."

He knows he must sound like a blubbering fool, incapable of much else other than her name and a few other strangled sounds, but she doesn't seem to care. She cups his face in her hands, soothingly murmuring to him, her forehead pressed to his, her nose nuzzling his cheek as he tries to reconcile all of it. Her being here. Her being safe. It's one thing to know it, but to see it for himself...

"Kate..." he breathes out in awe. So beautiful. She's just so, so beautiful. A sight for sore eyes if there ever was one.

"It's okay. I'm okay." She pulls back and smiles at him, her eyes shining with tears just as much as his are. She runs a hand down his cheek, stroking against the stubble that's come in overnight and it makes her laugh lightly when it pricks at her skin. It brings back a memory of a younger, more scruffy Castle, and she likes it. It reminds her of how long they've been doing this together now, how much they've overcome since the beginning.

He watches her in wonder as she lifts a hand to brush back the stray hairs flopping down his forehead so she can press a kiss there, quick and sweet.

He gets the urge to hold her. Wants to hold her and never let go.

"Kate I-" His hands hesitate, hovering over her face. "I don't want-" He stumbles over his words, afraid she'll miss his meaning but he's just so scared. Her skin is so mottled with black and blue and purple, and he tries to convey it with his eyes, his fear of hurting her.

She understands immediately, her own eyes softening in their gaze upon him.

"Here." She catches one of his drifting hands in hers and brings it to her lips before settling her cheek against his palm, his fingers trembling against her skin. She laces her fingers between his and holds him there as she murmurs to him, "You can touch me, Castle. You won't hurt me."

His throat bobs. "Never. Could never hurt you, Kate. Never."

Her fingers squeeze his tight and she leans in, presses her mouth to his. "I know," she breathes against his lips. "I never thought you did, Castle. Not for a second."

Castle's bottom lip quivers, and with the weight of his fears all lifted, he finally allows himself to lean into her, maneuver his limbs in the free space of wheelchair and wrap her in his arms. Not too tight, but enough to feel her, to breathe her in. She tucks her bad arm into his chest, fingers clutching the fabric of his shirt just over his heart as the other arm snakes around his neck and pulls him in closer. His lips feather along the soft skin of her neck, his mouth whispering words of nonsense and love, and choking back sobs at the same time.

"They took you away," she hears him cry, and it breaks her heart the way his voice sounds so fragile and scared. Broken. "I couldn't...they wouldn't let me see you, and then they brought me here and I...Oh, Kate—"

"Shh, I'm here now, okay? I'm here," she soothes, her fingers softly massaging his scalp and playing with the hairs at the nape of his neck. She can feel one of his hands clutching at her thigh as he drops down, lets his head fall into her lap. It gentles him, slowly but surely, until finally he settles down, his ragged breathing coming back to a more normal pace. He presses kisses through the fabric of her pants and just breathes, and she holds him there, gives him this moment. The tears rolling down his cheeks seep into her leg and it reminds her to wipe at her own wet eyes.

"I'm not going anywhere, Castle. Not without you."

Castle gives a nod of his head and nestles into her when she curls both her arms around him, holding him close and shielding him, protecting him.

"I love you, Kate." His voice is barely above a whisper.

"I love you too, Castle. I love you so much."

He did his part. Now it's her turn.

She'll keep him safe until they're both ready to face it all together again.

* * *

_And now they're together again. I hope the reunion is met with your approval (and if not, there's a box down there to file your complaints in.) I read each and every review and take all of your thoughts into consideration. This story still has much left to be told and now that all the angsty stuff is out of the way, the real fun can begin. If there's something you want to see, now's the time to tell me :)_

_Also, happy belated Thanksgiving to my fellow Americans.  
_


	14. Chapter 14

"You shouldn't be down here with me."

When his voice cuts through the silence of the cell, Kate lifts her head from where she's had it rested upon his shoulder. She'd fallen into a light sleep against him earlier but couldn't begin to guess at how long she'd been out, or how long it's been now since she'd first gotten in here to see him. There's no clocks on the walls down in holding, or at least not where anyone inside of a cell could see one, and they've been alone so long now together, the time just seemed to be dragging on.

She'd given her official statement to Gates some time ago, but the boys were still working on getting the charges against Castle dropped with the other detectives running the case at present. As Kate had suspected would be the case, it was taking a while with everything else going on in the precinct. Crime doesn't stop on the weekends. If anything, sometimes it just gets worse. There'd been a double homicide overnight in addition to all sorts of other domestic disputes and disturbances, and collectively it was just adding to an already very busy, bustling 12th Precinct.

Even Lanie had gotten called back down to the morgue to work on an additional case that had come in, much to her dismay. The ME had tried to get her friend to go to her dad's, or in the very least get some rest in the break room instead, but it had been a futile attempt. Protocols kept Rick Castle confined to his cell, Kate stubbornly refused to leave his side, and thus Castle and Beckett were inseparable.

Last the two of them had heard, Gates was growing impatient about the lack of progress moving forward in the case, seeing as evidence gathered in Beckett's assault was vital and needed to be turned over to homicide in order for assistance in further pursuing Cartwright and his thug Coleman. The pair were still at large with cops all over the Tri-State area on the lookout for men matching their descriptions. Despite Beckett's insistence she be kept in the loop on the case, Gates informed her detective that, as of today, she was to be on a minimum 4-week medical leave of absence, and expected to "_vacate the precinct and go home as soon as Mr. Castle is released._" Kate has a sneaky suspicion Lanie may have had some choice words with the captain about kicking her ass out of the station at her earliest convenience. Just what she needs...her best friend and her boss conspiring against her to do their bidding.

The captain had said nothing so far as her relationship with Castle was concerned though, and neither one of them was sure what to make of that just yet. A little disconcerting and yet somewhat a relief at the same time. Gates obviously knew now about them, there was no hiding it anymore, but had she known all along? Was she tipped off somehow before now? Or was silence and ignoring of the issue just the calm before the storm in light of more pressing matters at hand?

Whatever the case, here they've sat since then. Hand in hand. Waiting.

Wanting to be sure she could rest as the time ticked by, but still afraid to move her for fear of hurting her, Castle had insisted Kate stay seated and wheeled her into the corner of the cell, backing the wheelchair into the small space on the far left side where the bench ended just a short distance away from the cage walls. It was a tight squeeze, but the wheelchair managed to fit snugly. Her hand was warm in his and it was a comfort for her to be back by his side again, her cheek nestled against him, able to breathe in his scent and know that they were safe here. Given everything that had happened overnight, she wasn't really worried about maintaining a careful distance from him in her workplace. It's not as though she was on duty anyway. Gates had made it explicitly clear without even directly addressing it that she was not happy about the AMA hospital discharge and wanted her detective to be nowhere near the precinct as soon as possible.

But now, it seemed Castle was growing worried and restlessness about it, no longer comfortable with his injured partner by his side, and he was vocalizing his thoughts about it.

He wanted her to leave, too.

"Why?" she asks him in reply.

"It's cold and drafty in here with no place for you to lie down."

Kate shrugs it off. "I'm fine."

"No, you're not. You're hurt and you should be resting. I should have had Lanie take you home."

"My apartment is a crime scene right now. Besides, I _am _resting. Right here," she protests, attempting to settle back in against him but Castle tilts away gently, careful not to jostle her as he further objects.

"Kate, there's no need to stage a sit-in. It won't be long now before I'm released. You should be back at the hospital where they can take care of you. There's nothing more you can do here now. You're hurt and you need to be taken care of properly."

"Castle, we went through this already. I was discharged—"

"Against medical advice!"

"—and I'm not going back. I'm not leaving you."

"Kate..."

"No, Castle. I could have died last night. _On our anniversary_. And I almost thought I'd lost you, too. What I need right now is this." She lifts their entwined fingers between them, squeezes his hand in hers, and then tugs it back over and down into her lap.

"Just...give me this moment, okay? Please."

His worried blue eyes meet her pleading gaze and he simply can't refuse her when she looks at him like that; with her forest green eyes silently begging him, he'd give her the world if only he could. All she'd need do is ask.

Castle gives a nod of his head finally, and a squeeze of her hand as he acquiesces to her request. As he relents, she sighs, leaning back into him. She presses her lips to his shoulder in a quick kiss through the fabric of his shirt—the gesture both an apology and a show of gratitude—before she burrows herself into his neck again. Her nose nestles in against the skin of his neck and she breathes in the scent of him again, letting the comfort of it soak into her, fill her with that warmth that only he can provide to her.

She'd been so terrified while fighting off Coleman, knowing that Castle was on his way back and could get caught up in the fight at any moment should he return. Flashes of memory have returned to her since she'd first woken from her drug-induced sedation. At first they felt like a dream, but now the vividness, the distinct details and surge of emotion over the past hour or so, confirm to her that they are indeed memories, though she'd yet to share any of them with him. She's really not sure whether she wants to share them at all, for fear of causing him more distress. It was clear to her that he was dealing with enough of it at present, albeit internally. He might not be nearly as physically traumatized as she is, but the emotional trauma was all too apparent in his face, his eyes.

After they'd reunited and she'd cradled him in her arms as he practically collapsed into her, overcome with emotion, the first memory had sparked to mind from just before she'd blacked out from her injuries. She'd heard Castle calling out to her, could hear the terror in his voice even despite her hazy consciousness and the muffled, distant sound of it all. She recalls trying to form a response, recalls the intense desire to warn him and usher him out of the apartment, the fear eating away at her, but she was too dazed and weakened by her injuries. She could do nothing. Nothing at all. When Castle's voice became more frantic, she remembers Coleman muttering something; it'd probably had been a string of curse words, she can't be sure. Then he slammed her head back and she crumpled against the ground.

They say sometimes that people can still hear the environment around them as they're passing out, fading to black. She can only assume she had reached that small level of consciousness because as Castle's broken form had cried himself out in her lap before finally recomposing himself, she swears another memory flashed in her mind's eye.

Her vision was swimming in black, but his voice was so clear her head.

_Kate, I'm right here._

_You're safe now. I've got you._

_My turn now, Kate._

_I love you._

"Hey."

He only hums in response to her, so she nudges him with her nose to his cheek to get his attention. He still doesn't give it. Not quite.

"Look at me, Castle."

It doesn't take much more than a slight tilt of his head for him to catch her eyes at an angle, but she knows that for what it is. He's hesitating, unsure. Kate lifts her hand to cup his cheek and turns him to face her properly, just a breath away.

"You okay?" she asks.

He smiles dimly, a deprecating look about him. "I'm not the one all beat up."

She gives him a smile right back though, reaching down to tug his hand to her lips. "That's debatable, Chuck Norris," she tells him, going for some much needed levity, and she feathers a kiss across each of his bruised, injured knuckles, the marred flesh proof of his devotion for her, of just how far he'd go to protect her. How far he _did_ go to protect her last night.

Castle looks down at his hand in hers, how she rubs her thumb across his skin gently, reverently. Then he sees her other injured arm tucked against her, remembers the reality of the situation and extent of her injuries, and he sighs.

"He still got away. They both did."

"And we're gonna catch them."

Her confidence doesn't sway him. "You don't know that. For all we know, he could be halfway to Panama by now, or God only knows where else."

"If they try to fly or are on a flight and land somewhere, TSA's got them. Border patrol the same. They won't get far with frozen accounts and their faces plastered everywhere. It hasn't been that long yet. It's just a matter of time now, Castle."

"Yeah. Okay," he drawls out and with that she knows he's already throwing in the towel. He doesn't want to talk about it and he feels like he failed her. He won't voice it aloud but he doesn't have to. She can see it all over his face and it breaks her heart a little. He has no idea, none whatsoever, what he did for her last night. What his presence does for her now. For her every day.

She kind of wants to grab him, shake him up until he understands just how wrong he is.

Instead, she goes with another tactic.

She relinquishes his hand in order to set it on his shoulder, bracing herself with her good arm as she stands. His mouth quickly opens to protest, his hands darting out to grab and pull her back in, but she silences him with a finger to his lips, and her body slowly settling down into his lap. His hands drop down to grip her thighs by reflex, a need to hold on to something, anything. She dips her head down, her forehead coming to rest against his.

"You saved my life last night, Castle." Her whispered words are gentle, soothing. "If you hadn't come back when you did, who knows what else he could have done to me."

As much as it scared her for him to come back, she knows it's possible that she wouldn't be here right now had he not been waiting there at her door for her to come home. Had he not kept pressing the issue and made the extra effort to solve what they were fighting about all day.

Castle grips her tighter, sucks in a sharp intake of air just at the thought of it, his imagination running rampant with all of the heinous possibilities. But she settles him with her hand over his rapidly beating heart, her warm breath floating over his cheek as she nuzzles into him. His breathing hitches for a second, but then he reciprocates, nuzzling right back into her.

"Thank you, for being there for me whenever I need you most."

She feels it more than sees it when his lip trembles and his throat bobs. She knows what he'll say next, how he'll reply. She always knows.

And it takes him a second to gather himself, but finally he finds his word. Their word. Just the one.

"Always."

* * *

She's out like a light, sprawled out across the bench with her cheek nestled against his thigh, his arm curled high over her hip to hold her steady as she sleeps, when Ryan and Esposito make their way down into holding. Ryan calls out to Castle softly to alert him to their presence as a uniform accompanying them unlocks the cell door.

He was so zoned out, carding his fingers through Beckett's hair and watching the way her brow furrows so cutely in her sleep that he hadn't even heard them walk up. He blinks a few times as if to shake off the daze and then Castle sees that the uniformed officer has a pen in his hand and a clipboard filled with paperwork tucked under his arm when he walks inside the cell.

That's when the writer knows that it's time now. He's finally going to be free.

"Just sign all the yellow spots," the uni says in a hushed tone, and Kate surprisingly doesn't stir at all when Castle reaches out for the clipboard, hastily scribbling his signature in each of the highlighted sections of the paper. Lanie had administered some medication to her before she'd headed off to the morgue and it seemed to have finally taken its full effect, making her drowsy enough to sleep, and allowing her to stay asleep even in an otherwise terrible and quite uncomfortable resting position. He's never thought of Kate to be what one would consider "clingy" before, but she was fitting the bill now. Given what they'd spoke about earlier, what they'd gone through last night, he understands why, but he knows he'll never be content with everything until he gets her home. Until she's in a place he can take care of her, keep her safe, and where she'll be comfortable and able to rest as much as she needs.

"You can pick up your personal effects from Sergeant Gray on your way out," comes Gates voice as she approaches from behind Ryan and Esposito, and Castle glances up just in time to catch the quick flick of her eyes down to the sleeping detective curling into his hip. She pauses for a beat before adding, "I trust you'll see that Detective Beckett has an unhindered recovery away from this precinct."

"Yes, Captain." He'll be sure of that. He won't let her overexert herself. The case is out of her hands now, despite what she may think about it. It's time for her to mend, above anything else.

"Good. You're free to go, Mr. Castle. Detectives, we've got work to do."

"There's a cab downstairs waiting for you guys, Castle."

"Thanks Ryan."

"We got this, bro. Just take care of her for us."

Castle nods, and then the boys take their leave, following Gates and the other uni back into the heart of the precinct. Kate, ever oblivious to her environment, continues to slumber and he almost doesn't want to wake her. But he has to. It's what he wanted before, right? For her to get some proper rest in a bed, not lie down on the hard, grungy bench inside a holding cell.

"Kate," he calls out to her softly, brushing back some hair from her cheek and tucking it behind her ear. She stirs only a little, so he runs his hand down her arm, rubbing some warmth into her, hoping that it will rouse her better, but not aggravate any injuries.

She hums then, a tired, groggy sound from her throat.

"Time to go, Kate."

"Time to...go?" she repeats drowsily.

"Uh-huh. I'm free."

She smiles up at him tenderly, happy and pleased.

"I busted you out."

He dips his head in to press his lips to hers in a chaste kiss. "You did."

"Mm. Let's go home, Castle," she hums into his kiss, curling her fingers at his ear as she hold him to her, brushing her lips to his once, twice more.

Her choice of wording makes his heart skip a little beat, making him feel a bit like a sap, but he doesn't care. Home.

She said home.

"Yeah. Let's go home."

* * *

_Ugh. Apologies for the delay. This is another one that went through far too much editing before I was finally happy with it and I don't even know why. I had it in my head but couldn't get it onto the page how I envisioned it. Hopefully it reads well enough for you. Things will start picking up and moving along again in the next chapter. Feel free to let me know what you like/dislike, etc. I'm always open for suggestions and constructive criticism.  
_


	15. Chapter 15

It's a silent cab ride back to the loft.

A conflicted Castle made a mild fuss over Kate's seatbelt, what with her cracked rib and all, but she shushed him, clicked it into place and held a hand on it to keep it pulled slightly away from her body. She made a point after that to tuck herself as closely into his side as she could, and he wrapped his arm around her shoulders protectively, pulling her snug as his lips pressed to her forehead.

It settled him, as much as it possibly could for the time being.

Castle quickly gave the address of his loft to the cabbie, and off they went. After that, just silence amidst the ruckus outside the bubble of the little world they created together in the backseat of a New York City taxi cab.

And that's okay.

They've never needed words to show how they feel or what they're thinking. Not really. It's always been in the other gestures: a tender gaze, a shy smile. Kissing softly in a warm embrace.

Castle's long-time doorman, Eduardo, comes to the curb and assists Castle with getting Kate and her wheelchair out of the cab after they pull up to his building and double park. After he helps the two of them inside and over to the elevator, Eduardo sends along his well wishes for the detective's recovery. Kate thanks him kindly with a smile as the elevator doors close and she hears Castle let out a long breath behind her in the lift as they slowly ascend the floors.

"Okay?" she asks softly, tilting back to look up at him. He doesn't meet her gaze, just watches the numbers above the doors as the elevator rises.

"Yeah," His voice is quiet, a whispered breath of air, and tired. So very tired. She has to wonder how much he's slept, if he's slept even a wink at all through all of this. She has no doubt that, if she were in his shoes, she'd have been up all night herself.

The elevator reaches his floor and he wheels her down the hallway, searching for his keys in his pocket as they get close.

"Hey, can you...help me inside?" On Castle's puzzled look down at her, she clarifies, "Walking, I mean. I want to walk."

He looks unsure at the request. "Lanie said-"

"I know but, I'm so sick of this thing. My legs are fine. I just want to walk a little."

She leaves out the part about knowing that his mother and daughter are probably just inside the door, pacing around, waiting for their arrival, and she...doesn't want them to freak out. Or have them thinking that her being in the wheelchair means that she's worse off than she actually is. It's bad enough that her skin is sallow in addition to being mottled with bruises, cuts and scrapes, even if they're mostly hidden by the pants and hoodie at present.

His family knows some details of what happened, but not much, not the full extent, and she'd prefer it stay that way. She knows how close she came, how far Castle had gone to protect her. So does Castle. That's enough. She doesn't want to worry them more, especially with these men still in the wind.

Martha and Alexis already know what dangerous lives they lead with the NYPD. And with Castle taking the blame for this one, albeit briefly, she just wants to take some of that additional stress off of everyone. It's enough that she has Castle flitting around worrying—for good reason, she has to begrudgingly admit—but she doesn't want his family to hover as well.

Castle gives her a look like he knows there's an ulterior motive lying somewhere beneath the surface of her request. He's already declared before that she likes to carry the weight of the world on her shoulders. But even so, he seems to let it go. At least for now. He doesn't comment further on it.

"Just to the couch?"

"Yeah. That's fine."

"And only with me holding on to you."

"Okay."

Castle engages the wheel locks on the chair and carefully helps her to her feet. Kate braces a hand on his shoulder and leans into his side as he folds the chair up and pushes it against the wall just to the side of the door. She sways a little on her feet, leading him to wrap his arm around her a little tighter and ask if she's dizzy, but she waves him off with a comment about the meds still making her feel off-balance. Which they are. Probably. In addition to the concussion, anyway.

Geez, when she takes a mental tally of everything wrong with her body right now, she has to admit she really _is _pretty messed up this time. Beats a gunshot to the heart by a hell of a lot, not that she's going to point any of this out to Castle. No way, not a chance. That's still a sore subject they've yet to broach. If ever. But these symptoms are nothing in comparison to the agony of recovering from that.

She'll be fine. Just needs rest. And her partner. She's got her partner this time.

Her mouth scrapes along the stubble coming in at his cheek when she presses her lips to his skin in an impulsive kiss, a silent apology for a summer that feels a lifetime ago now, and she gets a grin in return for her efforts.

It's all she could ask for right now. To see him smile.

When Castle's key finds the lock and he opens the door to the loft, they're both surprised to find it seemingly empty. He'd called his mother from the precinct once he got his phone and other belongings back from Sergeant Gray, so he knows they're both here.

"Must be upstairs," he says, guiding Kate to his couch.

She sinks into the leather cushions immediately, soaking up the comfort they provide. She's always loved this couch. Almost more than she loves the sinfully soft sheets and mattress of his bed. Oh, tonight is going to be heaven on her achey frame.

"I'll go find you a blanket. Stay here."

She laughs a little, and bites back the _Where would I go? _retort when his lips caress hers. It's quick and sweet, or he intended it to be, but she finds herself tugging on the lapels of his shirt, wrapping her fingers in the fabric as she opens to him, wanting more.

Because they could have lost this last night. But they're both here now. He came to her rescue and she busted him out of jail, and now _this_. They have this.

To be here, getting taken care of by the man she loves...it feels amazing. And like home.

Being here with him just feels like home. She doesn't want to be anywhere else but here.

His quick steps across the wood flooring as he returns from his bedroom closet must tip off Alexis to his arrival home because she comes barreling down the stairs shouting, "Dad!" and Castle stops in the doorway to his room off the entryway, his daughter wrapping him up tightly in an embrace. Martha appears along the top of the staircase soon after, descending with an "Oh, Richard!" and then quickly pondering, "Where's Kate?"

The detective flushes from her seat on the couch, feeling a bit like an intruder on this special moment between her boyfriend and his family, their exchange of hugs and kisses, but then Castle's nodding his head in her direction and his mother yanks the blanket from his arms and flocks on over to where she's seated on their couch.

"Kate. Oh, darling, those crooks certainly did a number on you didn't they?" Martha laments as she drapes the blanket over the detective and tucks it around her for good measure. "Is there anything you need? An ice pack? Bloody Mary on the rocks?"

"She was injured in a fight, Mother. She doesn't have a hangover," comes Castle's interruption, walking over with Alexis closely tucked into his one arm and his face planted in the palm of the hand on his other. Kate has to stifle the laughter that wants to bubble up out of her at the sight of it all. His family dynamic is just something else sometimes.

"Yes, well, different strokes for different folks, my dear. Some people require painkillers, others prefer a little vodka."

"The painkillers are working just fine Martha, but thank you. You're very kind."

"Okay, but if you want anything a little stronger, kiddo, don't hesitate to ask."

Martha gives her a wink and Kate can't help the laugh that escapes her when Castle's mother prances off for the kitchen. Kate chances a look up to Castle and smiles at the apology written all over his face and his mumbled mention about the stupidity of mixing medication with alcohol. She shakes her head, doesn't even want him to worry about his eccentric mother. She can be a bit much sometimes, but she knows Martha means well.

"Are you really okay, Detective Beckett?"

Alexis' question catches her slightly off-guard, but she nods at the girl reassuringly.

"I really am. Your dad has been taking very good care of me and I'm really not that bad at all."

Castle gives her a look that she ignores, her eyes caught by his daughter's alone.

"And those guys that did this to you. They'll be caught, right? You guys aren't in any danger?"

Castle tugs his daughter in closer to his side. "No, pumpkin. We're safe right here." He presses his lips to the top of Alexis' head and snuggles his chin into the wisps of her fiery red hair. "Detectives Ryan and Esposito are hot on their trail. Everything is going to be just fine."

Kate finds it fascinating in this moment that Castle could be so vulnerable with herself earlier in the precinct, sharing his fears over the possibility that Coleman and Cartwright could evade capture, and yet here he is only a couple hours later, trying to reassure his daughter that everything will be fine. Did she manage to convince him earlier with her words of reassurance, or is he just putting up a brave face in light of his daughter's concerns?

Alexis herself seems rather skeptical, and glances from her father and over to Kate, as if looking for further support on her father's claims.

So Kate does what she does best.

"I promise you, Alexis. Your dad and I are totally safe now, and you have nothing to worry about. The NYPD is doing everything they can to catch these guys. And when they do, they're going away for a very long time. They won't be able to hurt me, your dad, or anyone else ever again, okay?"

Alexis nods her head at that. "Okay. Good."

The partners share a smile with each other, and Kate can only hope that what she said doesn't become an empty promise to Castle's daughter. In fact, she makes a mental note to call Esposito later for an update. To hell with Gates trying to keep her out of the loop on this one.

* * *

After dinner, Castle helps Kate with walking into his bedroom to get her ready for bed. He spent a good hour preparing a lavish meal he deemed fit for a queen that Kate admittedly scarfed down in a manner rather unbefitting for any sort of royalty. It was quite unladylike, if she does say so herself. After the crappy diet she had been stuck with at the hospital. not eating anything else for much of the day, and only one hand to be able to eat anything with when it came down to it, she thinks she's earned a little bit of time to be a bit unrefined. Besides, Castle didn't even let her sit at the dining room table, insisting she stay put on the much more comfortable couch. "Easier on your back," he'd said. And it was.

But honestly, he's a fool if he thinks she bought that excuse for him being able to cuddle up to her and watch stuff off of his DVR on the projector. Really, Castle. Way to be subtle. But she let him have it, if only because he didn't try to feed her himself throughout the entirety of an old episode of Game of Thrones. At least he recognizes some lines of which not to cross.

"Do you need another pill before sleep?" he asks, seated next to her on his bed as he gently helps her out of the hoodie she's been swimming in all day. She finds that it doesn't hurt so much to bend her arm and navigate it out of the sleeves unlike earlier in the morning with Lanie helping her get dressed at the hospital.

"No, I think I'm good." Her reply comes out a little muffled as Castle starts to pull the hoodie over her head, but he stops abruptly when he catches sight of the purple skin and white bandages beneath.

"Castle, a little help?" she calls out on a laugh, and blindly swings out to nudge at him with her good elbow when she feels his hand run down her back. Her breath catches once she realizes what he's doing.

He hasn't seen any of the injuries beneath her clothing yet.

"You're sure you don't need anything?" he asks again, tone much more subdued than it was before. Both of his hands run down the length of her sides, across the uninjured flesh and back up to her shoulders, and his thumbs dig in with a light circular massage and that she tilts and curves back into. It feels good.

"I wouldn't say no to a bath," she suggests, twisting back to look at him and gauge his expression. He's much calmer than she feared he might be, but then she even said it herself before. It looks worse than it is, and she's not been in any real pain aside from a twinge here or there.

"No stitches?"

"No. Nothing was deep enough for that. Biggest cuts just have waterproof bandages. Should be okay, so long as my back doesn't stay submerged."

"I can wash your back," he offers, thoughtfully, a finger tripping down to one of the bandages just below her shoulder blade where a curl of her hair tumbles down from her scalp. He follows it back up, searching for the bump on the back of her head and carefully runs his finger around the circumference of it. "And your hair, too."

She lifts an eyebrow at him in challenge. "You do mine, I'll do yours?"

He takes the bait, much to her delight. "Well, if that's the case, I'll wash you from head to toe."

She struggles out from where she's tangled in the hooded sweatshirt finally and turns to him, lip caught between her teeth, and her torso bare before him. She sees it when he catches sight of the surgical scar running along her ribcage on one side of her, the second visible reminder of her gunshot wound, and the bruising of the cracked rib on the other side of her chest. When his hands settle along her hips and his forehead comes to rest on her collarbone on a deep sigh, she sets her hand on his thigh, the tips of her fingers curling over toward the inseam of his jeans.

"Run the bath, Castle," she murmurs into his ear.

He doesn't need to be told twice.

* * *

_A belated Merry Christmas, Chanukah and holiday season to you all, and in case I don't update before the first, Happy New Year! I gained several more followers on this story over the holidays and am quite happy to have you all along for the ride. I was always skeptical how this story would be perceived and the feedback has been incredible. I'm so very grateful to those of you who take the time to leave a review and PM me with your thoughts. We're nearing the end of this one in the next few chapters, but I've got a few one-shots in my head, will probably be reviving "101 Ways to Put Caskett in a Casket", and I also have an idea for an AU fic that will be another multi-chapter. Won't be out for a while though, because I want the bulk of it written first. I know you guys prefer frequent updates over my take-forever-to-write-these-chapters approach ;) Anyways, thanks again for your support and as always, your thoughts, likes and gripes are always appreciated._


	16. Chapter 16

He's so gentle with her, she could cry.

Seriously.

She'd called the boys while Castle ran the bath, but they had nothing for her yet. Still searching for leads, waiting to hear from other police stations, and basically coming up with nothing. It frustrated her knowing she wasn't able to help out, was banned from her own precinct for the time being because of Gates' orders, but then Castle took the phone from her, ushered her into the bathroom, and now here they are.

From the way he ever so softly dabs the washcloth along the bump on her forehead, to the way he scoops up water with his cupped hands to let it cascade down her back and wash away the suds he'd left there, his lips peppering kisses into her skin all the while and not a single naughty nurse joke to be heard of, she feels like any second the dam will break and her tears will just erupt.

She's not used to this.

It's not a side of Castle she's really seen before.

Well, that's not quite true. She's caught glimpses of it over the years with the way he dotes on his daughter, and so she's always known he's had this tender, nurturing side to him, but god does it feel good to be on the receiving end of this doting, tender, sweet, sweet man. She's always been so fiercely independent, never needy, not even when her apartment blew up or she took a bullet to the heart. She preferred to hide away, lick her wounds in private, not open herself up to the care of others.

But right now, she wants more of it. More of what Castle is offering to her, enveloping her in.

Really, she can't get enough of him right now.

So after he finishes rinsing out her hair and asks if she's ready to get out, she shakes her head, stays him with a hand on his submerged knee where it rests just outside the length of her own leg.

"Can we just sit a little while?"

Castle curls around at her back, his arms wrapped at her waist, chin tucked into the side of her neck. His breath feels cool against her skin in comparison to the heat she soaked up from the now lukewarm bathwater.

As if he were reading her mind, he asks, "Want me to refill the bath?"

Kate nods almost imperceptibly, her forehead gently sliding against his, and he reaches past her, pulls the plug, and lets the cooled water drain from the luxuriously large bathtub before turning the tap back on. He reaches over the side of the tub to grab a bottle he'd left there and makes sure to add a generous amount of lavender bubble bath under the stream of water. He knows her so well, how much she loves her bubble baths.

Castle leans into the back of the tub again, gently pulling her back with him so that she settles into the vee of his legs, her backside nestled into his broad chest and protective embrace when his arms make their way back around her. She folds her arms over his, keeping him there.

When the water reaches a high enough point, Castle makes to move and shut off the tap, but she impresses him by deftly turning it off with her foot instead, effectively keeping him from getting up and disturbing the solace of this perfect moment together.

"She may be hurt, but she's still so very flexible," he murmurs in her ear. Her lips lift in a soft smile.

"Told you my legs were fine."

"I'd say more than fine. They're gorgeous. I appreciate them more with every passing day."

She laughs. "I'd let you appreciate them right now if I didn't feel like I was run over by a truck."

Kate realizes after it slips out that maybe she said a little too much. Castle lets out a rough breath and his arms tighten around her middle, his lips meeting the soft skin of her neck, and then she knows. Definitely wasn't the proper thing to say.

"Sorry. I didn't mean it like that. Really, I'm okay," she insists. She lifts a hand to cup his cheek, painting his skin with warm water and a small spot of bubbles. For a fleeting moment, the sight of the white against his cheek makes her think of an older, grayer Castle. Of being old and gray, just like this _with _him, many years down the road. At one time, it would have been a terrifying thought, something she would have vehemently pushed out of her mind and refused to let herself think about. Now though, she finds herself embracing the thought. She finds comfort in it.

They still have that chance. She didn't die last night and she's here, safe in his arms. They still have their whole lives together ahead of them.

And really, she wants that future together so much now. More than she ever thought she could.

"Just give me a couple days, huh? To recover. Then we can have this," she promises, her wet fingers trailing down his cheek, falling back down to his thigh where she scratches her fingernails lightly over his submerged flesh. His muscles twitch under her touch, but somehow it relaxes him, soothes him a little better having that physical connection.

"I just want you to feel better. I can wait for the rest," he replies quietly. "I don't need any more than you safe in my arms."

Oh, Castle.

"I know." She does. He's been such a very patient man for her over the years, sometimes never seeking more than a simple touch or a lingering gaze. She just wants to give him so much more now, now that she can. Now that they're in this together.

Kate tilts herself carefully at an angle, sliding down a little in the tub so that she can rest her cheek upon his sternum, her ear falling just over his heart. It thumps steadily in his chest, a soothing rhythm.

"You make me feel better, Castle. Just being here like this. That's all I need right now."

* * *

The water runs cold again before they finally decide to get out, Castle first, drying off and throwing on his bathrobe before he comes back for her. With her hand clasped in his, and his other arm slung low around her waist, he helps lift her out of the tub and wraps her body in a large, fluffy, blue towel. Once again, she feels her emotions building under the surface when he starts to pat her dry, ever so gently so as not to disturb her injuries, but she keeps herself in check, manages not to lose it.

After all, if she can't even handle something as simple as him caring for her during an injury like this, how is she possibly going to handle what inevitably comes down the road, wherever this relationship leads them?

Kate has to shake the thought off again before it escalates into further detail. Further, much more intimate and life-changing detail. Like platinum bands, white dresses, and little feet skittering across the floor.

Nope. _Not _helping. Clearly the meds she's on are making her loopy.

She ends up bypassing her own sleepwear she'd left here from the last time she stayed over in favor of grabbing one of his t-shirts and a pair of silk boxers. The loose, bagginess of the material feels better than the camisole, and it's rather warm out tonight, making the boxers seem a better option than her leggings. Castle got a little grin on his face when she nudged into him, intent on getting first dibs as she picked through his clothing and grabbed what she wanted to wear. It makes her even more content with the decision to wear his stuff. She's had about enough of his moping around and feeling guilty and worried. She wants her happy, goofy big kid with the twinkle in his eye back, not the frown and sad eyes he'd adopted since this whole ordeal began.

As if he's taking a cue from earlier in the bathtub, Castle crawls under the covers first, tossing the sheets back on her side of the bed. Lying on his back, he opens his arms to her and she smiles when she gets in, going straight to his waiting arms.

When she curls onto her injured side and tucks herself into his side, he grows concerned. "Are you sure you should be lying on that side? Doesn't it hurt?"

"You're supposed to lie down on your injured side, Castle. It helps you get bigger breaths in when you have a rib fracture."

"Really?" Kate hums an _mhm_ in response and nestles further into him. "Huh. That makes no sense whatsoever."

"Maybe not, but it's scientific fact." She yawns. "Or something like that."

"Okay, if you say so."

Castle reaches over to click off his bedside lamp and sighs as he settles back into his pillows with Kate tucked closely into his side, his other arm wrapped around her.

"Oh, hey?" she says suddenly, and it startles him because for a few minutes there, he'd thought she'd already dozed off with how quiet and unmoving she was against him.

"Yeah?"

"I kind of invited my dad to dinner tomorrow night."

"What?" She nods. "Here?" She nods again.

"I just...with everything that happened, you know? He was really freaked out and not happy with me at all for leaving the hospital. I just thought maybe that would make it up to him, mend things a little bit? I don't know. I've been loaded on painkillers."

Castle barks out a little laugh, and it's like music to her ears to hear it. "Okay. So, should I make something? Order in?"

"No, no. Don't make anything; Ordering in is fine. We don't have to make a big deal out of it. Just something casual, you know?"

"Alright. Does he like Thai? We haven't had Thai food in a while."

"Yeah. Actually that sounds good. Let's get Thai food."

"Okay. I'll order us Thai."

"Okay. Thank you." She lifts off of his chest briefly to brush her lips to his in a quick kiss, and then settles back in, yawning again. "G'night, Castle," she exhales breathily.

"Sleep well, Kate."

* * *

It's not long before Kate's breathing evens out and Castle finds that she's drifted off into sleep. He's glad. She needs her rest, especially so that she can heal. He knows she's hiding the bulk of her symptoms to try not to worry him, that much was evident in the bath earlier. But he knows she's hurting. She will be for a while. A couple days won't be nearly enough time to heal everything that was broken.

Without really thinking about it, he goes to turn on his side and face her, and the movement jostles her, eliciting a low moan from deep in her throat. He freezes.

"Oh shit. Kate," he panics. "Are you okay? Did I hurt you?"

She doesn't respond. Her head wiggles a little against his chest but she stays asleep, completely out of it. It doesn't make him feel any better about it. On the contrary, it scares him. What if he moves around and bumps her in his sleep? He could hurt her, whether she's awake enough to really feel it or not. He gets a little clingy in bed sometimes, wrapping his arms around her without consciously being aware of it. She's teased him about it, but it was never an issue.

Until now.

* * *

Hours later, the early signs of dawn start peeking in through Castle's bedroom windows, gradually bathing the room a low glow that steadily blooms until the whole room is lit with morning sunlight. He watches it all unfold with red eyes wide open, his partner sleeping peacefully at his breast, just as she did all night.

He's exhausted, but in the end, he couldn't sleep at all.

* * *

_Shorter chapter this time, but there's only a couple left to go on this one. Thanks to all who are still keeping up with me, and to all of you just tuning in.  
_


	17. Chapter 17

Kate groans awake, her body sore and shoulder stiff from the way she'd kept her fiberglass-splinted arm tucked into her chest all night. In the very least, she's thankful that it doesn't really hurt that much. Her headache is back, but aside from that, it's nothing a couple of pills won't take care of. Ugh. The fact that she even knows this sort of information about herself now, her pain tolerance level and what dose of medication works best to combat her pain, makes her stomach churn a little. It is what it is, she supposes. A testament of how she's lived through even the worst of times. She's a survivor, through and through.

She blinks her eyes a few times, allowing them to adjust to the light before she opens them completely, and once she does, she finds a pair of familiar blue orbs staring right back at her. Taking in her surroundings and her position on the the bed—her head resting along his arm as she's curled into his side, hardly a difference from how she'd fallen asleep—she smiles at him fondly and nudges her nose to his in greeting.

"_Castle_," she drawls out on a yawn. "How long have you been up?"

He hesitates, then lies easily, "Not long."

She rolls off of him and onto her back, giving her arm a couple circles to get rid of the stiffness and allow some blood to circulate again. She notices from the corner of her eye that he does the same with his own, and decides she probably should have tried lying on her back last night, despite the rib fracture. It's not like she's had much trouble breathing to begin with, and sleeping with a cast is rather troublesome on her side.

"Sorry," she apologizes sincerely. He gives her a questioning look so she continues,"You should have woken me up. Can't possibly have been very comfortable for you with me all over you like that."

"'s okay. No bother," he slurs, try as he may to hide his fatigue. He opts to slide out of bed quickly before she gets a chance to really wake up and notice. "How do you feel?"

"Better. A lot better, actually."

"Do you want me to make us some breakfast?"

"Yeah, that sounds good. Help me up?"

"Of course."

He shuffles over to her side of the bed and helps her sit up, waiting as she slowly swings her legs out from beneath the covers and over the side of the bed. She gets her footing much easier than it was yesterday, and finds that she's not getting a head rush like she did before. Well, not yet, anyways. She probably just jinxed herself.

"Still wobbly?" he asks once she's standing, though he's still got his hands on her, just in case. She takes a couple test steps, then reaches out with her good arm and gives his hand a little squeeze of reassurance.

"No. No, I think I've got it," she smiles and lifts up to press a kiss to his jaw. "Thank you," she murmurs.

After they've taken turns with the bathroom, Castle walks with her out to the kitchen and helps her hop up into one of the chairs at the island. She insists she fine in the chair, but really she just wants to be closer to him while he flits around making food. She's still not feeling so great about being doted on over everything, and at least she can weasel her way into mixing some pancake batter together from her seat while he works on the scrambled eggs and bacon. He fights her on it initially, but it doesn't take long for him to cave in.

It's not until his mother and daughter come downstairs to join them for breakfast that she finally notices something amiss with Castle though. She kind of wants to kick herself for not seeing it earlier, for not realizing it from the way he was when she first woke up.

When the redheads get to chattering up a storm about anything and everything going on in their lives, Castle starts having trouble keeping up with them. Not exactly uncharacteristic of him—honestly, he tends to zone out sometimes with certain subjects, especially crazy, dramatic stories coming from his mother—but now the two of them are asking _him_ what's wrong with him, and he starts asking them to repeat things.

And he's yawning. A lot. More than someone who should have gotten at least eight hours of uninterrupted sleep should be. Hell, she'd gotten in around ten herself. They'd gone to bed hours before anyone else did and the sun had been up a good long while before she finally opened her eyes to the world and crawled out of bed.

"Castle, can you come here for a second?" she asks him, nodding towards his office as she starts stepping in its direction. He gives her a curious look that she returns with imploring eyes, and then he sets down the dish he was hand washing before wiping his hands dry on a towel and following after her.

He turns the corner to find her leaning again his desk, he arms crossed as well as they can be for someone with a splint on her elbow.

"What's wrong? Are you hurt? Feeling sick? What do you need?"

It all comes out of him in a rushed breath, his hands reaching out to her hips and his eyes sharing a glint of panic between them. Up close now, she finally sees how bloodshot they are.

"I'm fine. But you aren't. Castle, did you even sleep at all last night?"

His jaw loosens at that, and his tongue slides out to wet his lips in a nervous gesture.

"Be honest with me." She catches a hand of his with her own before it can retreat back to his side, and then his head droops as he sighs a heavy exhale of air.

"I was scared to," he offers honestly.

"Scared?" He nods, and her thumb sweeps a circle over the back of his large palm. "Scared why? Because they're still out there?"

"No, not that." He hesitates explaining further, but then she calls out his surname in a soft but firm tone, and then he can't resist any further. He spills everything.

"I didn't want to hurt you again—"

"Castle you never hurt—"

"I did. I did hurt you. I moved and you cried out, so I forced myself to stay awake. I was afraid I'd squish you in my sleep."

"Squish me?" she laughs, amused with him. She was hoping to infuse some levity back into the conversation but his shoulders are slumped, his chin still tucked in toward his chest, and he's not showing any signs of seeing the humor here. She sighs.

"Come on," she tells him, twining her fingers with his and giving him a tug towards his bedroom.

"Kate? What—"

"Shh. Just come here."

Castle stumbles behind her, following, but then she stops at one of the bookshelves serving as his room partitions and grabs his copy of Frozen Heat, tucking it under her arm.

"What are you doing?" he asks in confusion before she's tugging on him again and leading him back to the bedroom.

"_I _am going to read. _You_, Mr. Castle, are going back to bed."

She swings their hands out as if to throw him towards the direction of his bed and he follows through with it, at least until his knees bump the mattress. He stops then, just staring at her as their hands detach and she moves away from him to go back around to the other side. She props a couple pillows against the headboard and clambers on up, settling back against them, then sets her book down on the end table.

"Can you adjust the curtains and let a little more light in for me?" she asks, and he does so, but then he's back to staring at her, still confused and unsure.

"Kate, I'm—"

"Come here, Castle." She pats her hand down beside her thigh, the sheets and duvet still as they'd left them earlier. "Don't make me ask you again."

He wants to make a quip about her not even asking him in the first place, more like demanding it of him, but he bites it back and crawls up onto the bed anyways.

"I'm fine," he insists, but she's not having any of it. As soon as his hand gets close enough to be within reach, she grabs his wrist and tugs, making her intentions clear.

"No, you're not. You're tired, Castle. You went through hell too, and you need to get some sleep."

"I need to take care of you," he counters firmly, and gets a glare and an eye roll from her for his efforts.

"And _I_ need my partner."

For a moment they just meet each other's eyes, holding that gaze that speaks volumes to one another even in the absence of words. Her fingers rub at his skin, feeling the chaffed flesh from where he'd been handcuffed, and where the cuffs rubbed the skin at his wrist raw.

"Look, I get it, Castle. I understand. But you're no good to me if you're exhausted. You need to rest just as much as I do."

Her hand releases his wrist then and migrates up to his cheek, her palm cupping at his jaw and her long, slim fingers brushing through the hair at his ears. His eyes close at the sensation.

"Just lie down for a couple of hours. Please."

They engage in a stare down momentarily, but Castle inevitably gives in, huffing out a defeated _Fine _on a breath of air before he plops down, sinking into the mattress. His toes squirm their way beneath the covers and he grabs the sheets, yanking them the rest of the way up, covering both he and Kate at the same time. She smiles contentedly and curls her hand at his chin once he turns back to her as if looking for approval.

"Castle." Her finger wiggles in a come hither motion, brushing along his stubbled cheek. He lifts up on his hands, meeting her for a lingering kiss, and then her hand guides him back down to where she wants him, his cheek pillowed on her lap.

"Sleep," she murmurs, shifting a leg up so that she can prop her book up on her thigh, and her fingers carding through his hair whenever she isn't using them to turn the page. Castle's arm comes up around her, holding her close, and she sighs with contentment with the feeling of him there.

It's not long before he succumbs to the alluring hypnosis of her ministrations and finally dozes off.

* * *

She's made it to chapter six in her reread by the time a tapping on the open door to Castle's bedroom causes her attention to lift from the page.

"Detective Beckett?" Alexis' meek voice calls out. She's standing there in the doorway, the house phone in one of her hands and looking unsure as to whether she should enter the room or not. She catches sight of her father and Kate hurriedly waves her in, beckoning her to come on inside.

"He's okay," she assures her, before the teen can let her mind wander as to why her father is passed out at nearly one in the afternoon. "I'm just making him catch up on some sleep."

"I thought something was off with him at breakfast," Alexis says. "He was acting out of it."

"Yeah. He just needs some rest and he'll be fine." Kate shifts her attention to the phone in the girl's hand and asks, "Something wrong?"

"Oh," Alexis stumbles, as if just realizing she'd initially come in here for another purpose altogether. "No. Well, I don't know. Detective Esposito just called the house."

First she finds it strange that she hadn't even noticed the phone ring, but then it hits her that Alexis just said _Esposito, _and Kate looks around for her own phone before realizing it's still out in the kitchen from this morning. Shit. She's been waiting for an update and she forgot all about keeping her phone nearby. How easily she forgets everything else when it comes to worrying about Castle.

Alexis goes on, "He said he had to go, but he wanted me to tell you guys that they got a lead. They're following up on it right now."

Kate's heart races in her chest. "A lead?"

Alexis shrugs. "He wouldn't go into anything else with me. Just said he'd contact you later if they have anything."

Oh shit. A lead. But that's...it's good, right? Means they might find the bastards and lock them up after all. But what _is _the lead? How'd they get it? God, she hates being out of the loop like this. Being injured, benched, and waiting for phone calls sucks.

"Thank you for letting me know," she says to Castle's daughter, and without thinking goes to get up. Once she shifts, a twinge in her chest causes her to recoil, and then Castle starts snuffling in his sleep from being jostled around. His arm clenches around her waist and his cheek nestles into her thigh, and one look at him makes her heart flutter for a whole other reason.

"Hey, Alexis?" Kate calls out, and upon hearing her name, the girl turns back around, attentive.

"Can I um...trouble you to grab my phone for me? In the kitchen." Kate gestures down to Castle with a nod of her head and a shrug of her shoulders. Alexis blushes first, but then her head bobs.

"Yeah, sure. Just a second."

When Alexis is out of earshot, Kate turns her attention back to her partner, oblivious to the world as he slumbers peacefully. She palms his cheek, dragging her fingers up and around the shell of his ear, rubbing his earlobe between her thumb and forefinger.

"Castle, they've got a lead," she whispers, unable to resist the urge to tell him, even though she knows she'll have to say it again later just so he'll be able to hear it. Castle lets out a little moan that she's unsure is in response to her speaking to him, or from the way she's fiddling with his ear—She can't help it. She's got a thing for those ears of his—but then his lips are smacking, his jaw working, and his face burrows into her hip as he mumbles nonsense into her skin and bone.

God, she loves him.

"Here you go," comes Alexis' voice from the doorway, and the girl makes her way over once Kate's head snap up to her. Kate relinquishes her hold on Castle's ear so that Alexis can drop the phone into her hand, and then the girl circles back around to the other side so that she can drop a kiss to her father's cheek. Kate smiles when she hears his daughter whisper _Sleep well, Dad _into his ear.

"If you need anything, just let me know, okay? Gram and I will both be here."

"Thank you, Alexis. I appreciate it."

Alexis nods with a smile and then in a blur of red hair sweeping out behind her, she's gone, leaving Kate and Castle alone again. She checks her phone to find three missed calls, all from Javi, but nothing else. With a sigh, she sets the phone down on the leg not occupying a snoozing Castle, and lifts her hand to smooth back some hair from Castle's forehead. He continues to sleep the day away, not even stirring.

Even if nothing else goes right today, at least she has this. Her partner.

She has Castle.

* * *

Some time later, she's not even sure how long, while she's still lazily working her fingers through his hair and browsing through her book, her phone vibrates and chimes with an incoming message.

Kate's heart skips a beat. It's from Esposito.

_Lead is good_ the text reads._ Should have them in our custody and back at the 12th by nightfall. We got 'em, Beckett._

She blinks, rereading the last line: _We got 'em, Beckett._

"Castle," she gasps, dropping her phone down on the end table where it clatters against a lamp. Her partner startles awake, fear and panic in his eyes because she's clutching at him, shaking him awake as she calls his name again and again.

"Kate," he chokes out. "Kate, what's wrong?"

"They got 'em, Castle! The boys got 'em!"

She's smiling and crying both, tears falling down her cheeks, and then Castle's asking "They got 'em?" and she's nodding with a watery smile and glistening eyes, prompting his emotions to quickly mirror hers.

"They got 'em," he murmurs into her hair, arms carefully wrapped around her while she winds hers around him.

It's finally over.

They got 'em.

* * *

_Apologies again for the wait on this one. I had some trouble with writing pieces of this for some reason and I'm still not sure if I like how it came out. Hopefully it turned out okay for all of you. Conclusion and final chapter will follow sometime next week so I can finish this story up before the end of the month. Thanks to all who are sticking with me till the end of this fic. As always, your thoughts are much appreciated._


	18. Chapter 18

Words could never accurately describe what it was that Kate Beckett felt while standing there in the dark observation room attached to Interrogation One, listening to that heartless coward Coleman rat out his own boss, the latter of whom was currently sitting tight down in holding. The hired muscle and hitman himself was currently sitting up there amongst the 12th Precinct's top list of most hated suspects due to what he'd done to one of their own, and he was damn lucky that Espo had only roughed him up a little bit before taking him into his custody.

The lead was good. An anonymous tip resulted in the location of a safe house on Long Island. Weapons were brandished, but fortunately no shots had been fired.

She and Castle arrived at the precinct just a short while before the boys brought the fugitives in.

And now she stood and listened in as the man who left her hospitalized went through each and every gritty detail, describing exactly what happened to Brandy Palmer, and how and why she ended up dead in her apartment that night. Then, as Esposito and Ryan aggressively tore into him even further, he coughed up the orders that he'd been given the night before last—a familiar story she'd already heard from the man's mouth just moments prior to being savagely beaten by him.

The order to make Detective Beckett disappear, by whatever means necessary.

She feels nothing hearing it again. Not sick with nausea or fear, not even a shred of anger. When she stepped foot into the 12th, she was all business again. Indomitable, impenetrable. Injured she may be, but defeated she was not. Gates' orders be damned, she waltz right back in to her domain, refusing to let these men think for even just a second that she was at home, licking her wounds and cowering in silence.

Hell no. She wanted to be there and stare the bastards down, then watch as her team dismantled them piece by piece in her stead. Not being able to be in the box and doing her job was frustrating, but being present to watch it all unfold was enough.

She could live with that.

It gives her a sense of grim satisfaction too, looking over at her attacker from behind the glass, if only because she can see how her partner fought him off during his brave moment of heroism inside her apartment. Their confrontation may have been brief as she laid there unconscious and oblivious to it all, but Castle still managed to beat the hell out of him, too. The first thing she noticed when they stopped off of the elevator was how Coleman's jaw was bruised black, blue and ugly. Now as he spoke to her team, the injury revealed itself in its entirety. It was causing him to slur when he talked, and Ryan sadistically kept asking him to repeat things even if his words were spoken clearly enough.

He wanted to make the man suffer when he had to open and close his mouth repeatedly.

Coleman would moan and groan every time he uttered even the simplest of one-word replies, and at one point in his anger at the blue eyed detective when asked to repeat yet another answer, he slammed a fist down on the table only to howl pathetically in pain.

Three of his fingers on his right hand were in similar condition to his face—another injury owed to Castle. The knuckles were black and blue, his digits and wrist puffy and swollen, possibly even broken in some areas.

She'd have kissed Castle for it right there and then, were it not for Gates standing in the room with the pair, watching and listening right along with them.

It took a great deal of persuasion on her part, but Gates eventually relented and grudgingly allowed Beckett to watch the interrogation instead of sending her right back out the door. Getting some personal closure on the case was a decent and legitimate excuse, and maybe on some level it was true that she did need that closure of seeing it all come to an end, but everyone knew how Kate was. Just like Castle, she needed the whole story. She needed to see it, hear it, have it all laid out before her. She needed to listen and observe with her own eyes and ears.

And if she wasn't allowed back on the case, she wanted to make damn sure that the boys locked this one up tight, for their victim Brandy's sake, as well as her own.

"They'll both be transferred to Central Booking tomorrow afternoon. The DA is drawing up charges in the morning."

Kate nods at her captains words, but her eyes remain focused on the scene in front of her.

She knows he knows she's there. Watching. His eyes keep darting to the glass, as if he were able to see her.

Even though she knows he can't, her brow still twitches, furrowing, every time his eyeline meets hers.

"He'll be prosecuted to the full extent of the law, Detective."

"Good," comes Castle's reply, low and venomous in his throat, and he shifts subtly closer to Kate, their arms brushing just enough to give that physical connection he's so desperately wanting but not brave enough to cross the line completely in front of his partners boss.

Or maybe he _is _taking a stand, showing her boss that they can and will remain professional in the workplace.

Whichever it is, she's grateful just to have him there. Always having her back, always by her side when she needs him most.

Before long, the boys are finishing up. In just an hour or so timespan, they've gotten everything they need. Gates exits the room to meet with Ryan and Esposito outside, leaving the two of them alone at last, both of their eyes trained on the man still seated at the table behind the glass.

Kate chances a sideway glance at her partner, finding a scowl on his face and his hand tightly wound in a fist.

She hasn't seen him like this since the time he beat down Hal Lockwood in a warehouse on a night nearly two years ago.

The night they shared their first kiss.

With that image in her mind, Kate breaks the professional barrier, reaching her hand down to gentle his fist, coaxing his palm into opening so that she can clasp hers with his.

He looks down at her hand first, the way her fingers slide between his, interlocking their digits in an unbreakable bond, and then he meets her gaze.

"For the murder of Brandy Palmer and the attempted murder of a New York City police detective, he doesn't have a shot in hell, Castle. Neither of them do."

"I want him to rot in prison," he admits, anger still laced in his tone, and he glances back through the mirror, watching as Coleman attempts to rub his jaw with shackled hands. "Both of them. I want them to rot away for the rest of their miserable lives."

Further crossing over their previously carefully established line of personal and professional territory, Kate turns and steps into her partner's personal space, letting her head come to rest against his sternum. His reciprocating embrace is immediate, the hand not holding hers coming up to rest along her lower back, arm curled around her body protectively with his chin set upon the crown of her head.

"They will," she whispers into his chest. They spend another minute or so watching through the glass before she shuts her eyes and burrows deeper into the warmth of his embrace.

"Take me home, Castle," she says a moment later. "We've got a dinner to order."

She can feel his lips press against her hair as he replies, "I'll call it in from the cab."

She doesn't let go of his hand the whole way back to the loft.

* * *

The warmth of the sun soaks into her skin, and the Pacific sea breeze fills her lungs as she stretches out along a sinfully soft beach towel. She's almost immediately lulled into a deep state of relaxation by the melody of the California coast playing in her ears—waves crashing against the shore, seagulls flying overhead.

There's also Rick Castle reapplying her sunscreen with the most intoxicatingly blissful massage technique that she's fairly certain he didn't mean to come off as so sensual but damn if it doesn't do it for her anyways...that's pretty damn relaxing, too. And hot. He's shirtless and in swim trunks and god does he look _good_.

They grabbed the first flight out to Los Angeles the moment she got the cast off her arm, and Castle acquired them a rental home that their friends then teased was going to be their beachfront love nest in Malibu.

They'd be able to stay two full weeks before she had to show back up in New York for duty, and Kate Beckett was determined to make their belated anniversary trip every bit the memorable and enjoyable getaway that she'd envisioned it as all those weeks ago.

This time, she let Castle plan the trip with her, hence the "love nest". But really, she couldn't fight him on it. He wanted her to be able to enjoy the California beach without other summer tourists, and honestly, even if she took no issue with people seeing her scars, both from her shooting and the attack, a private beach with not a soul around to bother them for two blessed weeks was a gift she couldn't possibly turn down.

Much like with the massage. _Ohhh_.

"Feels good, huh?" Castle beams, and she realizes she must have let out some sort of audible noise of pleasure. Damn.

"_God_ yes," she replies, when his knuckles hit a particularly good spot in her shoulder, and Castle's hands go still when he starts to laugh at her response.

"Wow," he laughs, and she reaches back to slap his arm lightly, get him back in motion again.

"Don't you dare stop, Richard Castle."

"Yes, ma'am."

Her lips purse as she tries to hold back her smile, but then his hands are untying her bikini top and digging into her skin again, and all bets are off after that. He sets about working out the knots and soothing away the tension in her neck and shoulders, and once his hands start to drift down to her lower back, he drops down, peppering kisses along the skin left bare by his hands.

"_Uhnn_," she moans, a string of unintelligible sounds escaping her lips. "_Castle_."

She can feel the way his lips quirk up, how he grins unashamedly when his open mouthed kisses make her shiver as the damp heat cools on her skin.

"I want you," he growls in her ear unnecessarily, hands slipping lower and lower still, his actions screaming his every want and need much louder than any words ever could.

Maybe she gave him too much credit before. Sensual might have been what he was going for all along.

"Was that your plan all along, Castle? Offer to rub lotion on my back so you could seduce me?"

"You were paying far too much attention to that book."

"It's one of _your _books," she scoffs, cracking an eye open to look over at her advanced copy of Storm Season sitting just next to her on the towel.

"But it's not _me_," he whines petulantly.

She sighs. He couldn't wait to give the new graphic novel to her, and now he's jealous she's been spending the afternoon reading it? This man, seriously.

She twists, rolling from her stomach and onto her back, and Castle's eyes dart immediately south from her eyes when he notices her untied bikini has shifted with her motion, riding up and letting some skin peek free. She rolls her eyes and reaches for him.

"Castle."

He looks up, attention grabbed, amongst other...stuff.

"I'm a little heated up out here," she purrs, low and throaty as she lets a single finger trace up from the waistband of his trunks, across the bare skin of his chest. "Let's go back inside."

He shivers, eyes growing dark in spite of the bright sunlight playing across his face.

"Yes. Back inside," he raises an eyebrow suggestively. "Let's go do that."

She grins brightly, thrilled with him, and places both her palms against each of his cheeks, pulling him in for a long, slow kiss. He returns her kiss eagerly.

After they pull apart, in the blink of an eye he's got his arms around and beneath her, and she lets out a surprised shriek as she's lifted up off of the ground. Castle's knee pops and he grumbles momentarily, but it doesn't stop him for long. He marches back up the beach toward the house.

"Wait," Kate says suddenly, looking back at her Derrick Storm comic lying forgotten on the beach towel some feet away. The breeze picks up and its pages flutter in the wind, but Castle doesn't stop. He keeps on moving.

"No," he huffs. "Storm had his turn. Now you're mine."

Her peal of laughter rings out as he carries her across the sand.

"Happy anniversary, Castle," she murmurs at his throat, as he gently sets her down in their bed.

"And here's to many more."

**END**

* * *

_Thank you to everyone who supported this story. When I started this, I thought it would only be 8-10 chapters at the most and that I'd be lucky to get 100 reviews. Now it has triple that. It's the most reviews I've ever gotten on a fic and I couldn't be happier with all the wonderful feedback and encouragement you all have given me since I started writing this in August. _

_I've got a few other fics in the works right now but they won't be making their way on here for a while, as I want to be able to regularly update at a nice interval, rather than rush to meet self-imposed deadlines before people lose interest and wonder "What's that fic about again?" ;) Anyway, thank you again and I would love to hear your final thoughts if you have them._


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